HELP! Bizarre boot up problem, need input! - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

zeronero · #1 01-10-2007, 01:55 PM

What's up, I have a bizarre boot up problem for you guys that I hope you can help me with. I'm pretty sure I know what's causing the problem but I don't know how to fix it. Let me start from the beginning...

Last night I decided to change by desktop wallpaper to an animated gif, I did and it worked fine. Used my computer the whole night with no issue at all and shut it down for the night when I went to sleep.

Fast foward to today, go to turn on the computer, starts to do its boot up thing, gets to the point where the desktop wallpaper appears but gets no further, no start menu, no icons, nothing but the wallpaper. The wallpaper though, is not the animated gif but instead my previous wallpaper before it. When I move the mouse to the bottom of the screen where the start menu would be the hour glass cursor comes up and stays like that until I move it somewhere else.

So, I put two and two together and come to the conclusion that it must be the animated gif that's causing the system to hang up on me. I then unplug the computer in order to get it to reboot and log on in safe mode which does work. I try to change the wallpaper in safe mode but for some reason it doen't save any changes I make. Everytime I would go to open the display dialog box after changing it it would always show the animated gif again. After a normal reboot it would hang up again at the same point.

I then tried to reboot in all the other modes and none of them would get past the initial wallpaper screen except for safe mode. In a couple other attemps to fix the problem in safe mode I deleted the file which didn't work and renamed a normal gif file as the animated one so the computer would use it but that didn't work either.

So, currently I can only boot up in safe mode but can't change the wallpaper and have no clue on how to bypass it. Does anyone know anything I can do, I really don't wan't to reformat my HD due to the hassle. HELP!

79-240d-project · #2 01-10-2007, 02:08 PM

Try this. Boot in safe mode and delete or rename the animated gif. Reboot in regular mode. You do not mention the OS but it should default to standard OS desktop wallpaper.

diametricalbenz · #3 01-10-2007, 03:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 79-240d-project

Try this. Boot in safe mode and delete or rename the animated gif. Reboot in regular mode. You do not mention the OS but it should default to standard OS desktop wallpaper.

I would agree that is the best route to take given the behavior of the machine.

I wonder if there was malicious code embedded in the gif?

zeronero · #4 01-10-2007, 03:37 PM

Problem solved!

I did a system restore through safe-mode. When I tried a normal system restore it didn't work so I never thought of doing it through safe mode, but it did work.

I already tried what 79-240d-project suggested before I put up the original post and it didn't work.

Oh well, problem fixed, thanks for the input!