*don't kill me* Help with Windows XP Professional.

[iRye]

I just installed a nice fresh copy of XP Pro on my PC. Now, whenever I try to boot up, I get the login screen, and when I try to log in, it has the correct password, but it says

The system cannot log you on due to the following error:

The specified domain either does not exist or could not be contacted.


What's wrong here? It has the Wireless card in, but doesn't seem to want to activate. Can anyone help?!

 

[trpnmonkey41]

Does your login screen look like

http://its.uwrf.edu/support/labs-tecs/images/xp-login2.jpg

or

http://www.guidebookgallery.org/pics/gui/startupshutdown/login/winxppro.png

If the first...below where you type in the password click the dropdown box and make sure you computer name is selected

If the second press Ctrl Alt Del to bring you to what should be the other login screen and do what i said

 

[iRye]

I have the second screen, i couldn't do what you said, there was no option for it

 

[trpnmonkey41]

What happens when you press Ctrl Alt Del?

 

[iRye]

I get the login screen and password field, but no domain option.

 

[dtravis7]

Are you logging in as Administrator or a user account you made? trpnmonkey41 advice is right. I don't know what is going on. That should work. When you the network part of the setup came up, did you put in any domain name? I leave it at Workgroup. The only time I have seen your issue is when it was set up like TM's first picture.

 

[iRye]

That never came up during the install...maybe I need to reinstall?

 

[dtravis7]

That never came up during the install...maybe I need to reinstall?

Is this a Full Install of XP Pro SP2 or a Restore CD that came with a machine?

 

[trpnmonkey41]

click the button that says option

 

[Ambrish]

I agree with the advice of the others above, I think whats happened is by default it thinks that you are part of a domain/network. What you can do is one of 2 things... either start as per normal, choose options and login locally (it will display your machine name as one option in a dropdown box) with the local administrator password and then right click on My Computer, choose Properties, go to Computer Name and choose Change. You then need to put it into a workgroup (use any name you like i.e. iRye_home) and press Okay. You may have to wait a few moments and have to enter the local username/password again and then you should be out of the Domain box.

If you can't login like that normally, try doing it through Safe Mode (when the PC boots, press F8 after the bios completes and choose Safe Mode, you may need to use Safe Mode with Networking instead of normal safe mode.

Other possibility is that someone changed your login options to login like you would do on a Windows 2000 box.

Let us know how you get on pls...

 

[iRye]

I had to reinstall windows. I hadn't logged in the first time. working beautifully as you can see from my sig