Windows XP SP3 Safe mode problems

[superatticman]

Hi

 

Am having problems accessing safe mode on all of our XP machines. These include 5 or 6 different machines with a number of different builds.

 

You are able to boot via the F8 startup, the PC reaches the safe mode logon box as per normal. What then happens is roughly 5-10 seconds upon reaching this, the PC simply reboots. This is regardless of whether you attempt to log on or not. There is a very, very brief message displayed which I cannot fully capture, but I managed to pick out something along the lines of 'unable to create temporary profile'.

 

Has anyone else suffered this and any fixes?

 

Cheers

[ChrisH]

Sounds like the hard drive is full.

[superatticman]

I can confirm the hard drives on all of these PC's are nowhere near full.

 

Have tried a chkdsk too.

[Michael]

Are you selecting Safe Mode or Safe Mode with Networking?

 

Have you tried disconnecting the Ethernet cable and/or switch off any wireless connections?

 

Does the PC allow you to logon OK in normal mode?

[superatticman]

Purely 'safe mode'

 

PC works fine in normal mode.

[Arthur]

'unable to create temporary profile'.

Does the event viewer have the full error message?

[Michael]

OK, so what is it you need to do in Safe Mode you can't do in normal mode?

 

In normal mode, try overwriting the default and local administrator profiles, then reboot and try Safe Mode again.

[sukh]

Hi

 

Is this issue specific for Safe Mode only, i.e can you login to Windows normally?

 

What did you try with chkdsk? chkdsk /f?

 

Sukh

[superatticman]

The reason we need safe mode access is because we use smart keys on our site. Occasionally a computer falls off the domain (more likely when one of the server admins accidently removes the wrong computer account!) and we end up locking ourselves out of the PC altogether. The way in is to access safe mode and modify the appropriate registry key (disable smart key) and then you can get in via user and pwd.

 

Will check the event logs etc

[sukh]

Hi

 

I would do the following steps

 

Run chkdsk /f

 

How to perform disk error checking in Windows XP

 

Run sfc /scannow

 

Description of Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 System File Checker (Sfc.exe)

 

The last steps we can try is “repair install”

 

Sukh

[superatticman]

Nothing in the event logs. And no error message milliseconds before the reboot! I'll retry the chkdsk /f and also try sfc /scannow just to prove a point.

 

A repair install probably rather drastic considering its affecting over 100 computers!

 

Someone has suggested that this has occurred at about the same time when we replaced the 2003 servers with 2008. Surely not a policy?

[Michael]

I wonder if the problem is malware related. Have you tried running a scan with Malwarebytes?