How do I fix a corrupt user profile in XP?

[Zoinks]

I have a second user profile on my computer for my wife to use. After a reboot, choosing her profile now gives me some sort of 'user profile is corrupt' error and loads a temporary profile. Her profile is still in expected folder but windows uses a 'TEMP' folder. Is there any way to fix this or should I just delete her and may a new user?

 

[TheOmegaCode]

A bit laborious, but you can try this.

 

[Zoinks]

Thanks Omega for the fast answer! I've never found anything very useful from microsoft support so I didn't even think to look there. You're right - at 24 steps its a bit laborious. You'd think there'd be a little utility to fix these problems within windows. sigh.

Thanks again!

 

[Zoinks]

Well, if anyone else ever runs into this problem, the MS fix doesn't really work. I got numerous errors after logging into the supposedly fixed account and some steps won't even work. e.g. the instructions eventually tell you to delete the corrupt user's folder but you can't actually do that without going into safe mode.