Re: Profile corrupted

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Most welcome, good luck and keep us posted. :o)

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All the Best,
Kelly (MS-MVP/DTS&XP)

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http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/taskbarplus!.htm

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"Andy Baker" <abaker@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:zKSdnbgMSO4aMmDVnZ2dneKdnZydnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Thanks for the suggestions. Disabling write caching sound like a good starting point - I will get him to do that.

Andy Baker

"Kelly" <kelly@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:eqMTDLuMJHA.728@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Suggestions:

Right click My Computer, Properties, Hardware, Device Manager. Locate the entries for your hard disks and double click each entry. On the Policies tab, uncheck Enable write caching.

You will see a performance decrease because of this, but if the corrupt registry/user profiles problems cease, then you'll be certain of the cause.

Logon to another account with admin privilege and run System Restore.
Choose the most recent restore point and SR should restore the user
hives.

Or...

Boot into safe mode and log in as Administrator. Copy ntuser.dat from %windir%\repair to "Documents and Settings\[your user id]". Now do a system restore to a point in time prior to when the corruption message began to appear.

Or...

Relocate NTUserdat

Look in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows
NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList and find the profile you want to change and then change ProfileImagePath to the ntuser.dat folder that you want to use. You must manually copy or move the ntuser.dat file there.

Corrupt Hive
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_sys32.htm

How to Recover from a Corrupted Registry
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q307545

Recovering XP using the Recover Console (Line 333) Right hand side:
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm

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All the Best,
Kelly (MS-MVP/DTS&XP)

Taskbar Repair Tool Plus!
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/taskbarplus!.htm

SupportSpace
www.supportspace.com/pages?aiu=kellyskorner

"Andy Baker" <abaker@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:JOmdncdmu--HzmHVnZ2dnUVZ8h2dnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
A friend of mine has a persistent problem with his XP machine in that every so often when booting up he gets an error message to the effect that windows is unable to load the default profile and is instead logging him on with a temporary profile. The error message also says a registry file it has tried to load is not in registry format. It then logs on with the default startup wallpaper and sets up default settings for Internet Explorer, Outlook Express etc

We can get it going again by doing a system restore, and it seems to work for a few days, then the same thing happens again. If he leaves the PC on, it works fine, then at the weekend, it presumably downloaded an automatic update as when he got to the PC in the morning, it had hung up at the 'windows saving your settings' screen on shutdown. He left it for several hours when nothing happened, then reset it, and on reboot got the corrupted profile error message again. On trying to do a system restore, we had to go back several weeks before we found one that worked, so it looks like the profile was corrupted and it hadn't been noticed because the PC had been left on all the time until the forced shutdown.

I understand what the message is saying and why the system restore fixes it, but am at a loss as to why is it happening in the first place. It is also very frustrating spending hours having to do several restores until we find one that works. I have done virus / spyware scans and found nothing. There was also obviously a shutdown problem after the automatic update (which I have now turned off) as the PC hung while shutting down - don't know if this is connected. It normally shuts down ok however, so it could be that the shutdown problem was caused by the corrupted profile and not the other way around. Does anyone have any ideas? Thanks in advance.

Andy Baker





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Relevant Pages

  • Re: Profile corrupted
    ... You will see a performance decrease because of this, but if the corrupt registry/user profiles problems cease, then you'll be certain of the cause. ... Now do a system restore to a point in time prior to when the corruption message began to appear. ... so often when booting up he gets an error message to the effect that windows is unable to load the default profile and is instead logging him on with a temporary profile. ... The error message also says a registry file it has tried to load is not in registry format. ...
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  • Re: Profile corrupted
    ... You will see a performance decrease because of this, but if the corrupt ... Logon to another account with admin privilege and run System Restore. ... windows is unable to load the default profile and is instead logging him ... The error message also says a registry file ...
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