Work PC suddenly developed an attitude???

[Sweeper]

work pc comes up to windows with a little box that asks for a password. Not to be mistaken for the typical Win 9x Password box.. It's just a little box in the middle of the screen which is just the color of the backround (no icons) and it asks for password. enter the wrong one and it's repeats (TRY AGAIN). Till it just goes to the desktop and there is nothing there.
NO ONE HAS ACCESS TO THIS MACHINE and since it's family owned and they don't know much about computers I doubt they have put it in there. It's for an insurance company and there are just 2 girls that work there in that office and the owner. He sent the pc home with me in hopes to repair problem...any clues????

[scotter]

have you run a virus check on the hard drive ?
I would try that first http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif
can you get into windows safe mode?

[Sweeper]

safe mode acts the same way. asks for password..then just sits there at the desktop with no icons or anything running????

[commodsquad]

probably a long shot....
how about booting to dos mode by using a floppy and doing the tedious file check to see if there is maybe some security type prog enabled?
or how about what scotter said about a virus check?
tried a look thru the bios for any password settings?
have you any info on when this started happening and maybe some step by step replaying of the events that may have happened to cause this? (like inadvertently clicking on the wrong button or something like that...)
I know I didnt help much.....

[scotter]

if your getting a passward in windows 98 in safe mode I would bet you have a virus make a bootable virus scan disk and scan that computer http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif
it's that or as commandsquad said some one has installed a security program on that machine in witch case it could be very hard to remove ? I dont know to much about them
but hopefuly some one else does ?

[800XL]

AFAIK, there are really only three places something like that could load from, four if you count a virus loading inside another executable file. My instincts say it is not a virus, but I could be wrong. Lets look at the other three places:

Autoexec.bat/config.sys: Boot to safe mode, command prompt only. Use edit to look at both of these files for anything that looks strange or like it may be the culprit. Put a REM statement in front of things you want to skip loading. If "edit autoexec.bat" isn't working try "c:\windows\command\edit autoexec.bat"

Startup Menu: This one is tricky if you can't get to it from in windows, but not that bad. Change into the windows directory (cd windows) then into startm~1 (cd startm~1) then into startup (cd startup). Do a dir to see what files are in there. If there is something that sticks out delete it, or rename it so that the extension is different. (From .exe to .bak, etc).

Registry: This is the toughest of all. There is really no easy way to edit the registry unless you are in windows and can hit start, run, and type regedit in the box that pops up. Once in there, it is a maze. If you get this far, get back to us and I'll go into where to look. If you have some idea already, look for Run, RunOnce, and RunServices and check out what is there.

Another possibility is that someone got creative with system policy editor and did something different. That could get really ugly. I would be finding out who the heck has been messing with that computer and get them to fix it, or roast their hinderparts for making more work for you.

[Glytzhkof]

I think 800XL covers just about everything. I would add to his list a look at "win.ini" and "system.ini" (In C:\windows\).

[Sweeper]

Thanks. Will try it all and see what happens.