User profile not being found...

[Nick1257]

I am new to these forums so excuse me if i put this in the wrong section, as i am not really sure where it should go.

Either way, I have just begun to experience a really frustrating problem with windows vista. Two nights ago when i started my computer up and typed in my password instead of the screen just putting up 'Welcome', it changed to 'Preparing Your Desktop'. After this it took about 3 minutes for my desktop to load, which is almost double the amount of time. When the desktop finally opens, a bubble pops up telling me that my user profile was not correctly loaded, and a temporary one has been loaded in its place.

At first i thought it might have just become corrupt and i could start a new profile. But none of the changes stick to this temporary file or any new user name i create. Frustrating that i have to upload my itunes library everytime i want to listen to music.

So i had a friend of mine try to help me, and he had me checking a file HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList

Under here i tried to ensure that the key name did not end in .bad (but it does end in .bak), The ref count was at 1 which i changed to 0, and the state count was already at 0.


None of this did anything... and really i don't know enough about computers to really comprehend what he has me doing here... so if anyone has a solution or any help... it would be greatly appreciated. If anymore information is needed, let me know.

 

[Nick1257]

Well i read up on the topic on the site by myself and realized that it was something that could not be recovered easily... so i just deleted the username and started a new one which has worked... But when i deleted my main profile Vista said it would copy a file with all my documents including pictures, music and whatever... but it never did that... and now i cant access any of that information on my computer. I dont even know how to delete it or make it available for the new user name to use and view.

 

[Brink]

Hi Nick1257,

Since the account was corrupted, it may not have been able to save (Keep Files) them to the new user account's desktop when you deleted it. If the old account is deleted, then the files will be gone.

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/93026-user-account-delete.html

Shawn

 

[Nick1257]

Brink,

thank you for the help... so before i deleted the profile these files were available to be used on other profiles. Now that the profile is gone i cant access them, and they absolutley were not deleted because i still only have 8 gig of a 120 gig hard drive left.. is there anyway to get rid of these files since i do have them backed up on my external hard drive and i could just import them in to the new user profile..

I really love this website by the way.. very informative and easy to use.

 

[Brink]

Nick,

If the old user account's user folder files are no longer located at the old C:\Users\(username) location, then I do not see how they can still be on the computer. When you delete a user account, these are the files that get deleted with it. The files in C:\Program Files will not be deleted though. If there is any other file or program you are talking about, what is it and the location?

Shawn

P.S.

I'm glad you like the website. Thank you.

 

[Nick1257]

Its strange... although it should have been deleted, it truly never was. I figured the problem out myself so hopefully if this happens to someone else they can debug.

Basically after i deleted the user profile, it never pasted to my desktop. But it actually never deleted the profile either, it only made it unavailable at start up to log in, and it made the C:\Users\(deleted username) unaccessible. I tried many different things including a system restore, but none of them did anything. I finally started the computer up in safe mode where i was able to cut and paste the files in to my new user profile...

Vista makes me ... Hopefully things will run smoothly from now on.

 

[Brink]

Nick,

How strange. Something must of interfered with deleting the old user account and it did not finish and became corrupted somehow. I'm glad you got files coppied over to the new profile.

Thank you for the feedback,
Shawn