This problem seemed like it just happened over night.
I turned my computer off the night before but then when i turned it on the next morning my Avast On Access Protection won't start up.. and also my wireless network connection won't connect.
only a few programs start up.
now i figured a way to fix this but not permanently.
i would have to log into another Administrator account then do a system restore on with that account because on the regular Administrator account it wouldn't open and everything seems to work fine, Shuts down then restores and files and settings then restarts and from there i am able to log into the first Administrator account and everything starts up fine but then when i shut the computer down and start it back up the problem just happens again.
What i also noticed is that when i click shut down from the start menu that is when everything seems to load up like normal but the system is already about to shut down so it just closes again.
now this only happens in XP and my vista partition is perfectly fine but i figured i'd post this problem in here since there are a lot of people here that might be able to help and still use XP.
Show us your startup list from msconfig, winpatrol or startup manager. There's something going on and I'm not sure. BTW, I just downgraded to XP last night on my new XPS 420 desktop, I just got fed up with vista's crap so I'm all XP now.
Do you really need all that to load at start up?
I would try trimming it down to the bare essentials
and go from there. Or at least try disabling one entry
at a time to try to find the problem.
it was an auto shutdown program i had installed and then when i used it to shut down my computer i guess it wouldn't let it start up right for some reason so i just uninstalled it and everything worked fine after that.
Ted