How do I force windows to use a specific profile folder?

[Red Squirrel]

One of our display machines (running XP) at work randomly crapped out, the GUI got all messed up, stuff was not displaying properly etc. Probably ran out of GDI resources. So I go to reboot it, log back in... and it freaking created a new profile instead of loading the normal one. We have tons of desktop icons and other stuff that's specifically setup and wont work under another user/profile. How do I force it to use the old profile (folder is same name as user) instead of keep creating a new profile each time I log in? Why is it doing this in first place?

I double checked and the profile has the proper permissions.

 

[mikeymikec]

HKLM > SOFTWARE > MS > Windows NT > CV > ProfileList

There are a number of subkeys in that folder. There will probably be two that share the same SID but one has '.bak' on the end. That one is (very likely to be) pointing to your old profile.

You may want to take a backup of this registry structure before you start. Rename the subkey without '.bak' to be .somethingelse, and rename the '.bak' one to not have '.bak' on the end. Also, make sure that ProfileImagePath (A string key in each subkey) for the one you're bringing back online points to the path of the profile you want to restore!*

I've seen newer versions of Windows (apparently randomly) decide to regard a profile as a dud and this has worked every time for me. I don't remember seeing it happen on XP.

* - I made a mistake once here as someone else had renamed the profile folder, then Windows decided to delete that profile folder, and I had to run data recovery and wipe the egg from my face. If you want to play it safe, it wouldn't hurt to back up the 'proper' profile folder as well!

 

[Red Squirrel]

Thanks that worked!

That was weird. Not sure why it went and did that but seems ok now.