userinit.exe problem

[Chitty's Leader]

Having a spot of bother with the laptop.
Working fine up until yesterday. Switched it on, a little dialogue box appears telling me userinit.exe failed to initialise. Then the desktop comes up; no icons, no taskbar.
I am able to restore to an earlier configuration, but even though it appears to work fine, it has become unstable insomuch that the laptop randomly closes itself.
Separate virus/spyware/ad scans reveal nothing.
I would rather reboot the entire laptop than work like this.
Is it something to do with the registry deep inside the thing?? Is there a tool available to correct the registry, which isn't malicious?
I did an internet search on this, but nothing seemed to help.
Another problem; when I insert the OS disk, it is supposed to run itself upon restarting & give me the options for rebooting. Instead, it doesn't.
So now, I'm left with an unstable laptop & no ability to reboot the computer to its factory settings!
Is there another way I can run the disc at all?
I would be very grateful if there is anybody who can shed some light on this for me please since this is very frustrating! :ugh:
Thank you,
CL.

[Parapunter]

If you're going to rebuild it & it sounds like you are, then whip off (if you can) all your data & put it somewhere safe. Then, insert os disk, restart machine, press del key during boot up to enter BIOS & from there change first boot device to the cd rom, save & exit & your os disk will boot.

[Alex_Ford]

Have a look here and see if this is of help:

http://www.file.net/process/userinit.exe.html

Alex Ford