Major problem i really need help

Ev!L-aLphA

Well I was at my grandparents this weekend and I wanted to check DH so I asked my grandpa if I can go on his pc he said sure. Ok I turned it on and every thing was working right but than I noticed that this real player update thing that my grandpa doesn’t even use is popping up and slowing the startup. Meanwhile I was surfing in DH and on newegg to see some stuff and before I went to shut the computer down I did run msconfig and than took real player off his startup tasks.

Now the problem ... I get back home all happy and stuff and my grandpa calls me and he is like what did u do to my pc its all screwed up and i was like what are u talking about so I went back to their house and i saw his pc and you see the background for about 8 seconds and nothing loads and his screen background is different all his icons are not there and windows tour and desktop cleaner pops up exactly like a fresh install. we put icons on the desktop that he lost and he restarted and they were gone exactly like windows is reinstalling itself but it keeps all its data.

I was like whoa what the heck happened and he said that after I used his pc that started happening and he was really mad cuz he lost 1 year of data a while ago and he cant afford to lose any thing else so I tried checking for the problem..

I turned the pc on and a error pops up

this is in the screen for windows XP right before every thing loads its the blue screen with the windows symbol thing

and it says this
"Windows cannot load your profile because it may be corrupted. Contact your administrator" and there’s this little count down than at 10 seconds it says "Windows cannot find local profile".

so I checked in control panel and users every thing seemed ok I checked administrative tools, event viewer and there was a junk load of errors. Than after that we did registry healer with Norton to see if it would do any good. Still nothing so than I said why don’t we restore your computer to a day before whatever happened so we tried it every thing ran good until restart we got the error again than it said cannot restore point (we have tried to restore the point on about 4 days and none worked).

Still nothing so I said ill ask these people on a very supportive site ill try to get u a answer soon. than about a hour later (I was at their house tiring to finish a very hard school project that took me tell 1:40 am to finish :[ ) he said hey come check this I did error fixer ( the blue screen that loads up before windows loads and its like fixing this that and that and the % of how much) and we found the file with his user profile. we waited tell 100 restarted same thing

[EDIT]
i checked hardware profiles and there were 3 the first one was about 500kb and it think it was secondary identity or temporary something like that second one im sure was his real profile it was 63mb i think and it had my grandpas name on it and the last one was the same as the one befor just about 10 mb.

i have no clue what the problem is can any one help me?

He has Windows XP home edition
amd athlon 1800 1.53 GHz
some Compaq persanio motherboard
512 mb ram pc2100
and 60 GB hard driver with 2 other 1 GB hard driver and I think 20gb hard driver from other computers.


Please I really need a answer on how to fix this its really important

Thanks guys

Nathan

Dyre Straits

This is one for Panging, I think. Keep your fingers crossed.


OR, did you already try a system restore?

Ev!L-aLphA

yes ive tried it over and overr

The_Neon_Cowboy

reinstall xp .....by booting from the disk and chooseing install then it give you the option to repair chose i and i'll istall right over you old copy.. be sure to use the same names for logins everything should still be there after ...

just easy way to fix it if you cant figure it out

Ev!L-aLphA

is that the only way cuz i mean id really rather not to do that on my grandpas pc ill wait a while to see if any one knows whats wrong

The_Neon_Cowboy

like I said it a last resort

PangingJr

this prob may occur if the current user profile is damaged.
before do a repair pls take your time and check it out,
i like to suggest you backup all his needed datas as much as you can,

and then pls read this...

1) Error Message: Windows Cannot Load Your Profile Because It May Be Corrupted
http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;318011

2)How to Copy User Data to a New User Profile
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=811151

3) if he uses Outlook Express e-mail and address book, read this also..
Backup and Restore Your OE Mail, News and Settings
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/tips/xp_oe_backup.htm

Then check out the following solotions..

R-click My Computer, select 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 (C:\WINDOWS\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.

Next, relocate NTUserdat

In the Registry Editor, Locate 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.

note-- under the ProfileList you'll see 3-4 sub folders,
S-1-5-18, S-1-5-19, S-1-5-20,
and S-1-5-21-xxxxxxxxxx-xxxxxxxxxx-xxxxxxxxxx-xxxx,
most likely that his profile is in the last one, click on it and you'll see..
"ProfileImagePath" on the right pane window.

Or...

Windows Cannot Load Your Profile Because It May Be Corrupted
http://support.microsoft.com/default...;en-us;Q318011

No_Style

If you use the same name, it wouldn't really matter because Windows generates some random characters to distinguish itself from the existing folder. (I think..)

But I do agree. Reinstall is the quick fix. It's usually painless as well if you keep your data and your OS separate.

BWX

Wow panging, you're always coming to the rescue. You must get paid allot at whatever you do for a living, and I'd say your worth every penny. You've helped me out personally a few times and I appreciate it-

I just wanted to say thanks for all the help you offer around here at DH with Windows/Hard Drive problems- you're the man!

PangingJr

i cant get this url to work as i want to.. it suppose to take you where you can see 100s ppls having this same prob.

Read more info about this prob...
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=e...ic.windowsxp.*

---------------
okay, use this url..
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=e...dowsxp.general

then copy/paste this.. Windows Cannot Load Your Profile Because It May Be Corrupted
into the search box. and let Google do.. Search only in microsoft.public.windowsxp.general

No_Style

He's elite indeed. Also very speedy at finding MS KB articles People should really check out MS KB for their problems... MS DOES HELP YOU!

Ev!L-aLphA

Wow dude thanks alot next time i go to my grandperants ill do this for sure thanks alot =D i really appriciate it. also all u other people thanks for helping.


^ thats why i love dh

Judas

try turning rechecking what you unchecked.... although it would be very strange.... you'd be completely utterly serprised..... but i recommend you pay attentio to what panging supplied you... if panging knows... everyone is in bisuness

PangingJr

You're welcome.. all of you.
Glad to hear yours nice words.. Thanks.

BWX232, let me clear up something...,
i post something and that may have helped someone here,
becoz i think he's a friend and he needs help.. that's it really.
Have you ever think of me as a friend??

believe me i've learnt alot of things from here as well,
even though i may seem knowledgeable about windows, i'm not.
i'm no windows expert and probably don't know the answer to the many questions,,
but when i see a new prob especially ones that i do not know or haven't seen it before.. i usually hop on it, looking for a poss solutions and post it,
and then you come back and reply with things like.. hey it worked or saying thanks... things like that means i've already learnt something new that day again. and it make me happy/enjoy and i'll keep doing this.. hope you understand what i'm trying to say here.