Way To Temporarily Bypass Auto-Launched Apps In XP? – 3146 days old

[Zema Bus]

I've done this once before probably in Win2K but I can't remember how I did it. I remember there being a message saying something about bypassing the normal startup stuff like win.ini etc. The reason is someone at work has XP (Home I think) with MSN, and she says as it boots up, she sees an MSN box that says something like access denied, then she says it "goes back to the Compaq screen", which probably means it reboots. She says this started after something went wrong while she was running the critical updates. I don't know anything about MSN or how it's software works, but it sounds like it might be the source of the problem and it apparently loads on startup. Thanks!

[floppybootstomp]

She could try installing this software: XP Anti Spy then using it to disable MSN on startup.

It's a freebie and works well.

[Zema Bus]

Thanks Flopps, only problem though is it doesn't allow her to do anything before it apparantly reboots. I asked her to try safe mode just by chance that would work, but I know safemode doesn't stop apps from loading.

[floppybootstomp]

Can she boot into safe mode?

If she can, you could maybe use the msconfig command in 'run' and take MSN from the startup list.

Or is it just constantly rebooting?

[Zema Bus]

Originally posted by floppybootstomp
Can she boot into safe mode?

If she can, you could maybe use the msconfig command in 'run' and take MSN from the startup list.

Or is it just constantly rebooting?

That's what I'm hopeing. I told her to see if she could get into safe mode and then we'd go from there. She didn't know how so I told her today and with any luck I'll find out something tomorrow. I found out a new bit of information today though. She said MSN complains that she's already logged on before it reboots.

[mlangdn]

I had that problem as well - MSN starting. I just renamed the damned thing in Program Files. Now it won't start!

[Zema Bus]

I got her to start in safe mode, and all was well! She said she was able to log in to MSN to get her mail etc. So I wonder if MSN was really the problem, or maybe it conflicted with somthing else. Does MSN even need to be running to dial in and access MSN? I thought maybe rolling it back to a restore point before all that happened would be the way to go. I thought also about 1st getting her to run msconfig and disable MSN to see what happens but I don't know what the executable is called.

[Zema Bus]

I was all set to tell her what to try next - msconfig, system restore etc when I went in today, but she said it's working fine now on normal startup. I'm not sure how simply booting it into safe mode solved whatever was wrong, but atleast it sounds like it's fixed. Kind of a mystery though.