What is Userinit Logon?

Userinit Logon -- looks like there's a possibility that it's malware.

And, not to be your mother, but you should never connect to the Internet without an antivirus program. Get thee to Symantec and buy Norton Utilities and install it. There are other antivirus programs out there and Norton does not cover everything. But it covers a lot and people seem to have fewer compatibility problems with it versus than with McAfee. Plus the company is reputable and not fly by night.

...but I had never connected to the Internet for the sole reason that I did not have any AV installed.
I have looked up 'Userinit' and it seems to be from Microsoft itself.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windows2000serv/reskit/regentry/12330.mspx?mfr=true

Userinit is basically part of your start up process

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windows2000serv/reskit/regentry/12330.mspx?mfr=true
Description

Specifies the programs that Winlogon runs when a user logs on. By default, Winlogon runs Userinit.exe, which runs logon scripts, reestablishes network connections, and then starts Explorer.exe, the Windows user interface.

You can change the value of this entry to add or remove programs. For example, to have a program run before the Windows Explorer user interface starts, substitute the name of that program for Userinit.exe in the value of this entry, then include instructions in that program to start Userinit.exe. You might also want to substitute Explorer.exe for Userinit.exe if you are working offline and are not using logon scripts.

Other possibly usefull links
http://forum.sysinternals.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=7672
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_wel_screen.htm

I just googled "userinit" and there are any number of usefull sites.
Non of them give a specific answer to your problem but I suspect that userinit.exe is corupt. You need to obtain a clean copy and insert it in the correct place in the registry.

It is also possible that an application being started by userinit is corrupt and causing userinit to fail.

I suggest you take the laptop to "the shop" and ask them to fix it.

I think I figured out the problem. I had installed another OS - Fedora 7 which is Linux-based on the E: drive. Most Linux OS's create a small partition (about 100 MB) out of the designated drive, and place a small file called the GRUB loader that presents the user with a choice of the different OS's installed at startup.
Though I had removed F7 by formatting the E: drive, the GRUB loader partition still remained. This prevented me from booting from a CD in order to repair the Userinit.exe file.
Once I did this...boom...I was able to boot from the CD and now my system is up and running like never before.

Thanks a lot guys for your help anyway.