Paging file problem with Win XP Pro. Whenever XP loads it allocates
0MB. If you try to reset under Advanced (Control Panel System) it
reboots but will not put 1024 into reset figure?? Also when first
booted the screen locks up when you have put password into box...The
only way to move on to desktop screen is alt+del+control. Only then
can you see your main desktop icons, but something is wrong as it(PC)
crawls? Anyone has an idea other than restore?

You might want to try and reinstall windows. Also you might have a
virus sucking on your RAm.

For the second part of your question it sounds like you might have a
problem with your shell settings. Open up regedit and check in
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows
NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon and make sure the key Shell is set to
Explorer.exe. Also, you should check in the same place in
HKEY_CURRENT_USER and make sure there is no Shell setting there.

Oh yeah... Reinstalls do the job... You must be working in Support...

I have the same problem sandywade-ga. Since yesterday or so. When you
login, you'll hear a beep from the computer speaker. Then the login
window is "hanging". The only way through is pressing ALT-CTRL-DEL.
Which will log you in. But when you go to the paging file settings you
get a message that windows created a small page file, because of
errors during booting up. Whatever you change there will not be
uptaken during the next boot.

I'll describe some drivers that I installed around the time where this
problem arose (I'm doing a fresh install of XPP) and please tell me if
you have some of the same devices:

- HP OfficeJet 5510
- McAfee AntiVirus
- McAfee Firewall Plus
- Marvell LAN driver
- Realtek AC'97 sound driver
- Intel 865 chipset driver 

Perhaps we can identify the cause this way?

and adding to my questions above, do you have SCSI hard disks or did
you change your hard disk configuration?

Thanks ahiemstra-ga for your comment.
I laughed at your comment re the guy who said to reinstall!! He must
be a tech supporter!!
The answer I found some days ago was to download a free utility from
INTEL main site called an "accelerator" or something! That did the
trick without having to format and reinstall.
There was no need to spend a week reinstalling stuff which these
techies conveniently forget! My Norton "Ghost" had not been loaded
onto this PC and it would have been a nightmare to build the whole
thing up again!
It now flies along with the correct amount of memory in the Paging file.

I just found another possible cause for this. I installed Adaptec
EZ-SCSI v5 on my Windows XP machine and enabled:

- drive light
- SCSI powerdown after 10 minutes of inactivity

These 2 actions load drivers. When I rebooted my machine, I got the
famous "beep" at login time and the paging file was gone.

I uninstalled EZ-SCSI and everything was fine again.

Btw, you may want to fill out the answer section of this question!