kilgore trout
Junior Member
Hello. I do hope that I've picked the correct forum for this question. 🙂
First, the computer in question is running Windows XP Home edition.
History: I was nice enough to build a computer for someone about a year ago, and thus far it had been smooth sailing for them, but recently they were having some hard drive space issues, according to them, so they enlisted the help of a neighbor to help clean up the hard drive. This neighbor apparently got a little happy with the mouse and made the situation worse... much worse... Additionally, they ran "System Restore" which failed to fix the problem. Of course all of this information could be a red herring, because they are unable to tell me what exactly led them to believe that they were running out of hard disk space, which means the comp may have been had the problem before they began tinkering...
Current symptoms: The end user cannot change the background, is unable to switch to classic view in control panels, is unable to modify the left hand side of the start menu, which is completely blank... etc.
Underlying problem: The computer appears to be unable to load the profiles that correspond to a particular pre-existing user, even though that profile was set up by the OS itself. There are multiple profiles for each user within documents and settings. For instance "Profile" "Profile.computername" "profile.computername.000" "profile.computername.001" "profile.computername.002" etc. with each incremental profile having a later date. Checking inside the folder reveals that the original "Profile" was the profile that was intended for use by the OS intially, and that each subsequent profile was created when it was unable to access that profile or the other subsequent profiles.
Creating new users and new user profiles goes smoothly and reloading them goes smoothly, but I'm lost as to how to restore the original profiles to their original condition, if this is possible at all. If anyone has any ideas, I'd be truly grateful.
If not, I will just tell them that new profiles will have to be created...
Thanks to all! 🙂
First, the computer in question is running Windows XP Home edition.
History: I was nice enough to build a computer for someone about a year ago, and thus far it had been smooth sailing for them, but recently they were having some hard drive space issues, according to them, so they enlisted the help of a neighbor to help clean up the hard drive. This neighbor apparently got a little happy with the mouse and made the situation worse... much worse... Additionally, they ran "System Restore" which failed to fix the problem. Of course all of this information could be a red herring, because they are unable to tell me what exactly led them to believe that they were running out of hard disk space, which means the comp may have been had the problem before they began tinkering...
Current symptoms: The end user cannot change the background, is unable to switch to classic view in control panels, is unable to modify the left hand side of the start menu, which is completely blank... etc.
Underlying problem: The computer appears to be unable to load the profiles that correspond to a particular pre-existing user, even though that profile was set up by the OS itself. There are multiple profiles for each user within documents and settings. For instance "Profile" "Profile.computername" "profile.computername.000" "profile.computername.001" "profile.computername.002" etc. with each incremental profile having a later date. Checking inside the folder reveals that the original "Profile" was the profile that was intended for use by the OS intially, and that each subsequent profile was created when it was unable to access that profile or the other subsequent profiles.
Creating new users and new user profiles goes smoothly and reloading them goes smoothly, but I'm lost as to how to restore the original profiles to their original condition, if this is possible at all. If anyone has any ideas, I'd be truly grateful.
If not, I will just tell them that new profiles will have to be created...
Thanks to all! 🙂