Freezing Up @ Loading Personal Settings

[firemandad]

Hi All-
I am not really sure why but my 4 year old PC is now stopping the boot up process when we get to "loading personal settings". I've tried running in safe mode and no luck there either. I purchased a recovery disc but unfortunately it makes no sense to me....since it had no instructions with it (ebay). Anyone have any suggestions? I can follow your basic instructions but if we get to the point I need to know all these technical computer commands, I need it spelled out for me as to how to proceed. Thanks in advance for any help you may be able to provide.

[Computer_Commando]

I assume this all happened without you making any modifications or changes to the computer or installing any new software.  If you can provide a list of installed software, particularly anti-virus and/or anti-spyware, that would be a starting point before resorting to this:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/helpandsupport/learnmore/tips/doug92.mspx

[firemandad]

ok-I got it to boot past the point of "loading personal settings" but now no icons are coming up on the screen? I am not sure what prograns are on there except itunes, taxcut, wordpad.......probably others but i just don't know.

thanks.

[Computer_Commando]

The point is, there is something that is causing it to run more slowly than normal.  Maybe it's time for some "house cleaning".
Download, install and run this:
http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner/

Run the main cleaner (check the 1st 3 IE boxes) and then run the registry cleaner more than once, until it shows nothing left to clean.