Fixing disabled userinit.exe entry

Here it is, years after the first post, and I find myself here, because I did it too: I shot myself in the foot, by un-checking 'userinit.exe' (in autoruns.exe), on my Windows XP Pro sp2 system.

And I did it despite having read the warning that "Users won't be able to log in".  I thought that just meant that I'd temporally have a single-user Windows XP system, until I re-enabled it.   But as you, and I now know, the warning means that un-checking that box will result in a zero user system.  

And I soon discovered I couldn't boot Windows XP Pro, not even into "safe mode".  Reverting to the Last Known Good Configuration" didn't help.  The recovery console was no help. 

Oh, that cold, sinking feeling.  Gulp.

I found several solutions on the internet, but none of them are very pretty.  Redhawk's most recent suggestion to "Download and burn a copy of Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset"  was the most palatable, but as of this date (2/2010) it appears that Microsquash allows only OEM-type people to download that software.

Fortunately though,  this (Redhawk's) solution works.  And it's (relatively) painless, especially if you already have a BartPE boot CD. 

But I'd like to add a couple of observations:

1)  Be sure you cd into the most recent _restore directory. 
It's possible to have several _restore directories.  If so,  "cd _restore*" will get you into to oldest snapshot.  Probably not what you want. 
Instead, first use "dir /od" to find the most recent '_restore...' directory, and 'cd" into that.

2) You probably just need to restore the "software" hive.
If you are doing all this just because you used autoruns.exe, and mistakenly unchecked userinit.exe, then you only screwed up the "software" hive.  That means you means you probably need only to restore the 'software' registry file:  You can safely SKIP the step
copy _REGISTRY_MACHINE_SYSTEM c:\windows\system32\config\system

That's what I did, and it worked just fine for me.   But I'm an idiot -- after all, I unchecked 'userinit.exe'. 

So you probably should ignore everything I say, except  "Thank you, Redhawk!"

One (BIG) issue I'm having is that my HDs are in a RAID_0 configuration, so at recovery even when I hit f6 and load the raid driver, I'm not really seeing the C: drive.

When I attempt this to recover from unchecking the userinit.exe in Autoruns via this method, I get the message "Access is Denied" when I try the rename (ren) commands.

 

Ideas?

In the interest of everyone I've removed the original post using the spooler trick because as it turns out this only worked with XP SP1 and not SP2.
I do have another method for restoring XP back to a workable state which I hope would be of some use.
Because it involves moving and copying system files basic knowledge of MS-DOS commands would be an essential requirement.

Every time you add drivers or install / uninstall software Windows creates copies of the system registry as a series of snapshots for the System Restore tool.
The method of recovering from a disabled userinit.exe is basically to grab the latest backup copies of the system registry files and to manually swap them with the current ones.
To do this you need access to the Windows file system with the aid of a boot Disk/CD such as:
BartPE (requires XP SP1/SP2 install CD)
Avira's freeware NTFS driver via a DOS boot disk
Windows install CD 2K/XP console recovery or slaving the hard drive with a bootable Operating System.
Note that Avira NTFS4DOS doesn't support long filenames and would make it hard to identify certain files (use only as a last resort).

These instructions assume C: as the drive holding the Operating System in question. This may change depending on BIOS settings and dual boot configurations.

Open a cmd shell or DOS prompt and type the following:

(rename the current registry files just incase you want to rename them back)

ren c:\windows\system32\config\software *.old ren c:\windows\system32\config\system *.old

(access the System Restore backup copies of the registry files)

c: cd\system volume information cd _restore* dir and then: cd RP?? e.g. cd RP63 (pick the latest Restore Point folder it should be the highest numerical value from the directory list) cd snapshot (if this folder is missing "File not found" you need to pick another recent RP folder)

(replace the system registry files using the backup copies)

copy _REGISTRY_MACHINE_SOFTWARE c:\windows\system32\config\sofware copy _REGISTRY_MACHINE_SYSTEM c:\windows\system32\config\system

Now reboot Windows should be running back to normal.

Richard S.

Edited by redhawk - 19 April 2008 at 6:28am