Userinit Problem with broken CD drive

[digg98]

Hey, my friend recently deleted or quarantined userinit.exe with his anti-virus software. He is now unable to login. He is ok with doing a reinstall, but his CD drive is not working. I tried to boot to linux on USB drive and for some reason or another that wouldn't work. I've done a lot of research and haven't been able to come up with anything. Hopefully someone here can point me in the right direction.

Alienware M9700 if it matters.

 

[Win2kpatcher]

Have you tried to replace the userinit.exe file with a known good one? Without having a CD-ROM drive or being able to boot from a flash drive the options are pretty slim. I am thinking you can slave this drive in a working box and try moving the file over this way. Easiest way would be to temporarily rig another CD-ROM drive and run a vista repair if that is an option. Can you get into any kind of PBE via flash drive?

 

[digg98]

Do you think I could take the hard drive from the laptop and plug it into my desktop? That seems like it would be the easiest solution. Thanks for the help