every time i boot my pc when i get to the desktop i'm greeted with a prompt telling me "a previous instance of litestep was detected"

does anyone have any idea why litestep tries to run twice or what areas i should look in in order to investigate?

i thought it could be somehow related to the the registry key that causes the os to boot into litestep so i set winxp as default shell but that didnt fix anything.

i also tried unistallin then reinstalling litestep but that didnt solve the problem

http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/autoruns.shtml

Grab that and then reply back with every location that litestep is listed under.

thats a great program jugg

i selected view all and view services and litestep was only listed once in hkcu\software\microsoft\windows nt\currentversion\winlogon\shell

though i aint expert in what the reg settings should be that looks like it should be right.
litestep is only set as the default shell for one of the two users on this pc

what is in HKLM\software\microsoft\windows nt\currentversion\winlogon\shell ?

What happens if you delete the HKCU 'shell' setting, and enter litestep in the HKLM shell entry?

And I don't know if this will help, but it was just released:
http://blizzle.com/releases.php?id=1272

I've seen people mention this problem before, and I haven't seen anyone follow up with a solution. So, if you do find out, please post back.

My only guess so far is that another program is inexplicably trying to relaunch the shell when it starts because it assumes Explorer should be running, and when it doesn't detect it, then executes the shell entry again. But I have no idea why that would be the case (and it probably isn't). But you could always try disabling all startup items, and see if the problem goes away...

Last question, when you installed litestep (I'm assuming you used Omar's Litestep Installer) did you install it per user, or for all users?

Good luck.

i finally fixed it.

i dl'ed shellon3 and set that as shell just to see what would happen the result of which is that on bootup i was presented with two instances of shellon.

that confirmed though that the problem wasn't litestep and after poring through the registry i noticed that a backup of userinit.exe i had made while messing about with reshack and logonui had somehow crept into the registry.

userinit is the program that calls for the shell to load so two instances equals two calls for the shell.

i dunno if anyone else is likely to play about with that file (i have no idea why i ever messed with it) but if anyone gets similar problems then its worth investigating in that area.

bear in mid that you have to be very careful with userinit because without it you cant login to windows and so if you do anything make sure that you leave a backup copy so as you can easily replace it from the repair console if things go wrong.

thanks for the help jugg

Mmm. Lets put this in the 'important topics' section. If it comes up again it would be nice to have it right-up top.

Thanks for following up on this egon spengler. And since the post has a relevant subject title, it should be easy to find if the issue comes up again.