the trouble i ran into wasn't this particular bug. i ended up formatting and reloading, but here is some of what i tried before giving up:

After upgrading from Win98 to Win2k, system fails to allow access by any username/password combination. The desktop wallpaper briefly flashes before returning to the signon screen. Researched the trouble and found several references to "userinit.exe" and it's registry key. The down side is that I have to way of accessing the registry to check the settings. Network card isn't pulling an IP address. Can't login. Can't access registry.

There are products for $100+ that allow access to a dead registry. I simply recovered the data and did a complete wipeout and clean install. Unfortunately, several applications had to be reinstalled as well.

One virus was found in 5 different locations. Ad Aware was mentioned by a fellow technician to have a bug that may effect userinit, but I did not see the filenames referenced.