Windows 2000 logon error
 

I have a laptop with Windows 2000 on it. NOTHING ELSE. Fresh install.

When it loads and I logon it hangs and does nothing. I log off and log back on and it loads fine.

Any ideas.... its driving me nuts.

I totally wish I could help you, because in doing that I could help myself.

I have run in to that exact same problem. I waited about three days to see if it would clear up, but it didn't, so I reinstalled again.

Windows is a blast sometimes, isn't it?

What action do you take when it hangs so you can log off & start again?

Are you always logging in as the same user? Which? You could have a bad profile.

When it's hung can you get the task manager with ctrl-shift-escape?
If so, click "new task" and try "explorer". Did that work?

Are you on a plain win2000 install or are you updated with SP4 and whatever windows update stuff is out?

It's possible that you either need an update OR you need to remove an update to solve your issue.

If I understand correctly you're able to hit Ctrl-Alt-Del and get a logoff prompt, you logoff and then you logon again, correct?

Or do you have to totally reboot the machine?

Get a copy of msconfig from an XP installation, or download HijackThis to see if anything is trying to run on startup. I've seen some programs cause the CPU to go 100% utilization and hang. A quick removal from startup (as long as its not necessary to run on startup) should fix your problem.

I reformatted and reloaded it... I hate Windows sometimes.

It was probably related to the DHCP client starting up. AFAIK, windows starts a DHCP client process when the logon screen appears. If you still don't have an IP address after you have logged in, it waits for the DHCP client to time out before assuming you're not a member of a domain or something, and proceeds with a standard login. The second login goes quickly because the DHCP client isn't waiting anymore; the system already knows the status of the ethernet adapter.

This may not be your problem, but this is what I traced my problem to when I had a similar issue.

Hrm, I'll have to keep that in mind.

I've been running a Linux based DHCP server for over five years now, and it's pretty rock solid, so maybe the network driver just wasn't as fast to initialize as I would have hoped.

The scary thing is that a reinstall almost always fixes it.

have you tried using windows update??? maybe they have a solution for it