[EmCom]

Again it happended.. after 8 months. When i started xp it said "cannot open your profile.. blaa blaa its corrupted"

All my settings and shortcuts, everything gone! now i aint gonna set everything up again if it does this again in the near future.
So im asking, has anyone been in the same situation and how could i fix this.

Last time i did everything from the start, icons, programs but now i have too many of them and it would take ages to even remember everything

So all help appreciated

[cmmahone]

I had this happen two months ago. CHKDSK/R did not work and there was no way to rebuild the profile.

Had to reformat and start again.

Sorry.

[Alien]

I had this happen just the once - but it was ages ago & I don't remember whether I fixed it or had to redo everything. 1 thing I do remember is that I'm pretty sure it was before I realised I could do perfectly ok with just the Administrator account. Do you have the main Administrator account plus other accounts?

Another issue is that my HDD is an IBM 75GXP. I've read a lot about the probs ppl have had with them, though aside from the occasional file or 2 getting corrupted & having to be replaced, & it's possible that this might have been the cause when I had the same prob as you.

[EmCom]

Well i've noticed some corruption now and then on my files :I
And i have a IBM hd.. dont remember exactly what model but it's close to yours Alien.

Ill try the system restore of it would be kind enough to do something, but i dont know when it has made an backup so its there and there if it works

Damn this can be hard.

[CyberGenX]

I got the solution....Dump WindowsXP (eXtra Problems) until SP1 or 2 comes out.

[Dazultra2000]

This hasn't happened to me on XP, but it did happen to me on 2000, and is what really swayed me to XP..
I had built up a very nice user profile, and had a lot of work in there.

One day I go to load it, and get denied.

Format, XP, happy.

Don't we all love MS

[CyberGenX]

Do any of you back up your profiles/Files?

[Dazultra2000]

Yes, but as with all things concerning me, it happened on the very time I was going to back up

I was actually logging in to back up, and that's when it broke.

Irony is not my friend

[Alien]

I occasionally backup my entire C: partition to another partition with Ghost, but other than that I don't bother backing up most of the time. That may change if the new version of Ahead/Nero's InCD actually works without problems [haven't tried it yet] - I may back up some of my My Documents stuff. As for profile corruption & losing stuff due to reinstall or whatever - I wouldn't lose much - my Desktop, Favorites, My Documents, OE address book & emails are all kept on other partitions - the only stuff that goes on C is Windows itself & the programs I install - so all I'd really lose is my settings for various things like theme colours, & the settings that tell Windows that stuff like My Documents isn't actually on C: etc, but that is very easily put back.

[CyberGenX]

I don't rely on MY computer at all. It is stable and runs great BUT a server in my home office (4 computers total on cable internet)actually holds all my crucial data. I simply MAP My Documents to a drive on the server and keep all my data there. A simple drag and drop to another (backup) mapped drive - backs up all my crucial stuff like profiles, favorites, Desktop shorts, registry etc.. The server backs up onto CDR weekly. This is not expensive...(unless you go ape sh*t like me)

This gives me the freedom to do whatever i like with MY actual PC without screwing up my data integrity.

[EmCom]

Damn it! Holidays starting and my comps screwed up. Its not that i cant repair the things but im going to a lan party tomorrow maybe and this sucks :I

It would be ok if i could save the settings but i cant do it because it always say it wont save any of the changes i made to the desktop.

So if anyone know how i could make it to save the settings... the last profile doesnt matter if i could only get it to save some changes, please tell me

[Dazultra2000]

Only thing I can suggest is creating a new profile, and copying your software/favourites/cookies across.

Make sure you don't copy and user.dats or desktop.inis etc cos it could be them causing your problem. Just view all files (including hidden and system files) and copy all normal ones.

Unfortunately there is no way to recover a broken profile as far as I know - that's it.

[EmCom]

Hmm i created a new profile but it keeps loading the admin account always even if i have another profile created ? i copied all the files and the dat files too :I well that was yesterday. As soon as i get home from work ill try some of the tips if heard here.

Noticed too that i cant "delete" the admin account whats broken... so it would change to some other account. Well i did expect i cant do that

[EmCom]

Ok so i just deleted my last profile and made a new one.
System restore didnt help at all for this problem.. strange tho i loaded from a week old backup where everything would have been right :I

Well i suppose it doesnt back profiles up.
Now im going to back up everything related to my current profile to avoid it in the future. And thanks for the tips everybody