it never ends

Well, I screwed up my laptop again, but this time it’s my own damn fault trying to use custom themes. Now when I power it on it appears to load like it should, gets to the password screen, and once I enter my password it stops at the following error message:

AtBroker.exe – Application Error
The application failed to initialize properly (0xc000007b). Click OK to Terminate the application.

If I leave it alone for about 30 seconds, the background fades to black and says “This copy of Windows is not genuine” – but it is, and has been until I broke it tonight. Then when I click OK I get a second error:

SLUI.exe – Application Error
The application failed to initialize properly (0xc000007b). Click OK to Terminate the application.

and in the background I get a different window open that says:

Transitions Accessible technologies between desktops has stopped working

…so I click OK to the first and Close the program for the second, and a new one pops up to keep me company now:

Windows Activation Client has stopped working

…so I close that one two since there are no other options available, and it sends me back to the password screen again. If I enter the password I get the same procession of errors. Rebooting leads me back to the same spot. Uhg. I can’t boot, I can’t even get to safe mode, and “last known good” was no good at all. I just hope I can get to the restore point I set up before frakking with the system files.

As much as I want to bitch right now about how bad Vista sucks, I know full well I’m to blame here. At least I didn’t have anything critical stored on it yet, just a couple days worth of reinstalling programs if it comes to that.

Edit: Success! Sort of. System restore took forever but I’m back to a safe boot. Lost more than I expected though, but not as much as I feared. C’est la vie.