Windows XP corrupted user profile

YT300000 · Post by **YT300000** » 2007-12-21 02:36pm

Yesterday I booted up my computer, only to be hit with an interesting error message: My user profile was corrupted, so Windows had set up a temporary one.

Since I regularly back everything up, this wasn't as catastrophic as I initially feared, and I've since created a new user profile, and copied all my files and most of my settings over. With the exception of MSN (which won't let me log in, or install the newest version), everything is working again. And the latter is not of immediate concern, as I've installed Trillian.

This is really the first problem I've had with this old computer; in fact, for the last four years, XP has been almost unnervingly stable. My question is: does this happen very often? And what could have caused it?

Vendetta · Post by **Vendetta** » 2007-12-21 02:45pm

Happens occasionally, System Restore can usually unfuck it.

YT300000 · Post by **YT300000** » 2007-12-21 02:57pm

Vendetta wrote:Happens occasionally, System Restore can usually unfuck it.

Yeah, that was the first thing I tried, going as far back as a week, but it wouldn't restore.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2007-12-21 07:53pm

Try forcing it to recreate the profile: Login as another user (administrator would work well for this), go to Documents and Settings, and rename your user profile's folder. Login as yourself. Copy files over from the folder you just renamed.

YT300000 · Post by **YT300000** » 2007-12-21 09:31pm

Uraniun235 wrote:Try forcing it to recreate the profile: Login as another user (administrator would work well for this), go to Documents and Settings, and rename your user profile's folder. Login as yourself. Copy files over from the folder you just renamed.

That's ultimately what I did, though it failed on the first attempt. The second time around, I made sure not to copy any system files, and it worked.