[Semper Paratus]

By 'magic disk' are you referring to a recovery boot disk.
You may have a corrupted registery probably caused by a virus. The boot disk may, and I mean may, get you enough access to repair the registry.

Otherwise you may have to reinstall. If you don't have an original cd with the 'key code' you'll either have to buy W2000 or talk somebody who has one to let you borrow it.

Very similar thing happened to me yesterday.

[Zavien Doombringer]

If the Master Boot Record is damaged, you wouldn't get to the windows login. If windows 95 (ewww) or 98 were the OS, then I would have suggested booting to A:\, then FDISK /MBR to repare the boot record. Win 2000 is a different animal...

[zeugma]

Ah yes, the joys of running windows

[joanil]

it is a boot floppy that my Nephew called a 'magic disc' to use to restart the system, but it does not seem to do anything when inserted into the floppy drive. Yes, I have a valid win2000 cd but I do not know any 'code' or numbers to begin the startup! This all started when I downloaded the recommended June 3rd service pak from ms. When asked to restart after a successfuldownload of the service pack, I restarted the computer, and that i when it went into the endless startup loop with password loss. Forgive my typing in typo's, this web tv keyboard is downright medival!