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Win 10 - "Interactive Signin Process Iniitilization has failed"



 
 
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  #1  
Old April 5th 17, 06:17 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10
NY
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 586
Default Win 10 - "Interactive Signin Process Iniitilization has failed"

Has anyone experienced and fixed this bug. It seems to be fairly common
according to the number of google matches. The absence (or corruption) of
\windows\system32\logonui.exe seems to be implicated, with a lot of fixes
being ways of copying the file from a saved version (if one exists) or else
copying from another PC. But is that the whole story?

A friend has started getting this every time he boots, with the added
peculiarity that his mouse pointer does not move, so the mouse driver seems
to be blocked as well. Restoring from a saved restore point does not work
(not sure of the symptom). Next resort (if replacing logonui.exe doesn't
help) is to try to restore to factory state, having xcopied the user data to
a backup drive (luckily Command Prompt does still work).

But before we go down that route, is there anything else to try first?


One interesting thing is that on the Microsoft forums no-one from MS has
ever acknowledged that the problem exists or offered solutions. It's the
standard response that they give to many problems, which gives the
impression that this is a new one that they've never heard of before.

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  #2  
Old April 5th 17, 09:05 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10
Paul[_32_]
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Posts: 11,873
Default Win 10 - "Interactive Signin Process Iniitilization has failed"

NY wrote:
Has anyone experienced and fixed this bug. It seems to be fairly common
according to the number of google matches. The absence (or corruption)
of \windows\system32\logonui.exe seems to be implicated, with a lot of
fixes being ways of copying the file from a saved version (if one
exists) or else copying from another PC. But is that the whole story?

A friend has started getting this every time he boots, with the added
peculiarity that his mouse pointer does not move, so the mouse driver
seems to be blocked as well. Restoring from a saved restore point does
not work (not sure of the symptom). Next resort (if replacing
logonui.exe doesn't help) is to try to restore to factory state, having
xcopied the user data to a backup drive (luckily Command Prompt does
still work).

But before we go down that route, is there anything else to try first?


One interesting thing is that on the Microsoft forums no-one from MS has
ever acknowledged that the problem exists or offered solutions. It's the
standard response that they give to many problems, which gives the
impression that this is a new one that they've never heard of before.


You can apply both "dism" and "sfc scannow" to an offline C: partition.

Normally, you'd use DISM like this (while the OS is running).

Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth

But if you boot the installer DVD and use the Command Prompt,
the WinPE OS is X: and with some luck, C: is still C: .

DISM needs to be convinced that C: actually has
a Windows structure in it, to scan. Each of these could
take some time. When working in Offline mode, the utilities
don't always produce logs.

Dism /Image:C:\ /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth
Dism /Image:C:\ /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

This is how you'd do the next step, which is sfc scannow. It
can be done from WinPE as well. Note that modern Windows OSes,
the "boot" and "system" can be on two different partitions.
If you use the "dir" command and find someletter:\boot\bcd
exists, then that's the partition with the bootdir.

http://winaero.com/blog/how-to-run-t...does-not-boot/

sfc /scannow /offbootdir=C:\ /offwindir=D:\Windows

When I applied this sequence to a broken OS here a few days
ago, my offbootdir and offwindir were both C: , and that's
because the "giblets" of the OS are all on the one partition,
nice and simple.

So those are two examples of things you can do when the OS
is broken. It helps if the WinPE has working networking at the
time, because for repair, it's going to need access to microsoft.com .

You can do those, before giving up and reinstalling.

*******

A non-working mouse, can be a mouse driver that didn't load.
Note that if you have a PS/2 mouse and a USB mouse at the
same time, Windows can make the arbitrary decision to stop
after one HID is detected, leaving the other one dead. Sometimes
a reboot recovers both of them.

I doubt that any conventional explanation, will be able to
determine why your logonui and mouse driver, died at the
same time. Bad RAM ? Damaged (needs CHKDSK) volume ?
While I could understand the complicated infrastructure in
Win10 breaking and preventing logon (just like Cortana or
Start could break for no discernible reason), it's really
a tossup as to whether to head in a malware direction,
a failed hardware direction, or a "DISM/SFC" direction.
Obviously, all three have to be clean, for the OS to work.
I'd probably verify the hardware first, DISM/SFC second,
and use an offline malware scanner just in case, as my third step.

Paul
  #3  
Old April 5th 17, 11:34 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10
Ken Blake[_5_]
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Posts: 2,221
Default Win 10 - "Interactive Signin Process Iniitilization has failed"

On Wed, 5 Apr 2017 18:17:32 +0100, "NY" wrote:

One interesting thing is that on the Microsoft forums no-one from MS has
ever acknowledged that the problem exists or offered solutions. It's the
standard response that they give to many problems, which gives the
impression that this is a new one that they've never heard of before.




There is almost never anyone from Microsoft on the Microsoft forums.
There are some Microsoft contractors, mostly in India, and with an
occasional exception, most of them are terrible; they misunderstand
the question; they give wrong answers, etc.

Just in case you think that a Microsoft MVP is a Microsoft employee,
let me make it clear that an MVP is never a Microsoft employee.
  #4  
Old April 6th 17, 11:43 AM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10
NY
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 586
Default Win 10 - "Interactive Signin Process Iniitilization has failed"

"Paul" wrote in message
news
NY wrote:
Has anyone experienced and fixed this bug. It seems to be fairly common
according to the number of google matches. The absence (or corruption) of
\windows\system32\logonui.exe seems to be implicated, with a lot of fixes
being ways of copying the file from a saved version (if one exists) or
else copying from another PC. But is that the whole story?

You can apply both "dism" and "sfc scannow" to an offline C: partition.

Normally, you'd use DISM like this (while the OS is running).

Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth

sfc /scannow /offbootdir=C:\ /offwindir=D:\Windows



Preliminary report: I've got the PC working!

I found that c:\windows\system32\logonUI.exe was missing so I copied on the
one from my Windows10 PC and it booted perfectly. Goodness knows how the
file came to have disappeared: it wasn't as simple as it being in the
Recycle Bin (though I'd expect it to be locked so it can't be deleted).

The big question is: what else has disappeared at the same time. I'm running
"sfc /scannow" - at the moment at it's about 15% through the verification
phase at present. I might try the DISM commands as well to be sure.

Thanks to everyone for their help - and thanks to the various forums which
referred to restoring the missing/corrupt file. I never thought it would be
so simple.

  #5  
Old April 6th 17, 02:43 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10
Paul[_32_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 11,873
Default Win 10 - "Interactive Signin Process Iniitilization has failed"

NY wrote:
"Paul" wrote in message
news
NY wrote:
Has anyone experienced and fixed this bug. It seems to be fairly
common according to the number of google matches. The absence (or
corruption) of \windows\system32\logonui.exe seems to be implicated,
with a lot of fixes being ways of copying the file from a saved
version (if one exists) or else copying from another PC. But is that
the whole story?

You can apply both "dism" and "sfc scannow" to an offline C: partition.

Normally, you'd use DISM like this (while the OS is running).

Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth

sfc /scannow /offbootdir=C:\ /offwindir=D:\Windows



Preliminary report: I've got the PC working!

I found that c:\windows\system32\logonUI.exe was missing so I copied on
the one from my Windows10 PC and it booted perfectly. Goodness knows how
the file came to have disappeared: it wasn't as simple as it being in
the Recycle Bin (though I'd expect it to be locked so it can't be deleted).

The big question is: what else has disappeared at the same time. I'm
running "sfc /scannow" - at the moment at it's about 15% through the
verification phase at present. I might try the DISM commands as well to
be sure.

Thanks to everyone for their help - and thanks to the various forums
which referred to restoring the missing/corrupt file. I never thought it
would be so simple.


That should not happen.

Maybe an aborted Windows Update (kill power in the middle of
an update) could do it. Otherwise, not.

Files in the System folder, are protected by system file protection.
If you remove a file, the system should put it back.
(At least, as long as *some* copy of the file is present
on C: ).

The necessary copy is sitting in WinSXS. (For stuff like drivers,
there's a separate cache folder for those.) Files from WinSXS
are "hard-linked" into the System folder.

A combination of offline DISM and offline SFC should have
been able to fix that (DISM downloads the file, SFC makes
sure it's hard linked in and so on). And not break any
hard linking methodology in the process.

My guess is, your AV got a "false positive" on the file,
and quarantined it. Check the quarantine directory (if
you can find it). That seems a less coincidental explanation
than the file just "disappearing" on its own. AV programs
make mistakes occasionally, and for some, the damage
will be done, before the AV vendor can push out
a retraction.

Something happened to my "Inventory Agent" invagent.exe
or so, on my Win10, and that's where I got my chance
to practice with the offline DISM and SFC.

Paul
  #6  
Old April 6th 17, 03:12 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10
NY
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 586
Default Win 10 - "Interactive Signin Process Iniitilization has failed"

"Paul" wrote in message
news
My guess is, your AV got a "false positive" on the file,
and quarantined it. Check the quarantine directory (if
you can find it). That seems a less coincidental explanation
than the file just "disappearing" on its own. AV programs
make mistakes occasionally, and for some, the damage
will be done, before the AV vendor can push out
a retraction.


I did look at the recent AV scans (from AVG Free) after I'd got the PC going
and I was checking that it was clean of viruses and malware. And no recent
(before the last time the PC worked) scan had found anything that it had
removed/quarantined.

I wonder about a duff update process.

I was rather gobsmacked that the first test I did, presence of logonUI.exe,
was the one that fixed it: I was expecting to have to try a lot more other
things as well before I hit on the solution. I tried that first because it
was the quickest fix, on the grounds that a PC that boots is a better
platform to run further tests (and requires you to jump through fewer hoops)
than one which is only running in the pre-boot Command Prompt.

Getting the file onto the PC took a little while. I thought I'd copied it
onto a flash drive but that was empty (maybe I formatted the drive again
afterwards!) so I had to disconnect the dead PC while I got out my standby
Win10 PC (I don't use it for real - I hate Win10 and use Win7) and connected
it up. Then I found I needed to format the flash drive as FAT32 because
Command Prompt wouldn't see it as a drive when it was NTFS. I like having to
be a bit resourceful and find ways round little embuggerances like that :-)

Yes I probably should have used the backup copy from the PC, if I'd known
where to look for it. I'll remember WinSXS for the future. At least I
checked that the timestamp on my logonUI.exe matched the ones on other files
in System32 and therefore was likely to be from the same version of Win10
(ie Anniversary rather than original release).

When I was handing the PC back. I also suggested (my standard spiel!) that
he should buy a backup HDD and make frequent backups of data (docs,
accounts, pictures etc) in case of problems like this, so at least he could
put critical things on another PC to carry on until his PC was fixed. And I
suggested using MS SyncToy or similar file-for-file backup software rather
than proprietary software which comes with many backup drives because that
often writes everything to one huge file, and so needs the software to be
installed on the loan PC to be able to retrieve things from the backup,
rather than you being able to go to folder Pictures\March 2017 on the backup
drive and copy back the file that's got corrupted using normal Windows
Explorer.

 




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