Puzzling WinXP error

May 31, 2006 8:14 PM

On two separate laptops, Windows XP is misbehaving in an odd manner that prevents the user from doing anything. Error messages such as "Not enough quota is available to process this command." and "Windows cannot create a shortcut here. Do you ant the shortcut to be placed on the desktop instead?"

Two of my friends' laptops have recently fallen under the spell of a mysterious affliction that replaces the auto-login user with a user named "SYSTEM", gives that user a quota of what seems to be zero, and gives a very limited explorer.exe environment.

I can't do anything different in any of the safe modes.
Changing and/or removing the "AutoLogon" details in the registry doesn't do anything.
I can't run any apps including Control Panel or rundll32 - it gives the "no quota" error.
When I try to switch users, nothing happens (it stays at the desktop).

With both laptops, the only way out of this situation is to hold down the power button.

Can the hive suggest any diagnostics or troubleshooting to go through?

posted by yellowbkpk to computers & internet (1 comment total)

Try a repair install (also known as an in-place upgrade). You can get far more thorough instructions by Googling than I can recall sitting at a Mac. The System user is a legitimate Windows username, but normally humans are never logged on as System.
posted by evariste at 8:40 PM on May 31, 2006