Corrupt Profile

There may come a time when you can't log on to your system with your profile in Windows XP. There may even be a handy error message with it but that's no matter, the results are the same and chances are (if you've been poking through the site) you're thinking that you have to do a repair installation of Windows^®. Well, you don't normally need to do such a thing...

Such error may appear similar to this:
"Windows cannot load your profile because it may be corrupted"
error message when you try to log on to Windows XP

No worries, you've always wanted to be corrupted but didn't want to admit it in public. Anyhow, now that you're corrupted you probably want to fix it. The following items might help you get started in the right direction:

How to Identify a Damaged User Profile and Create a New Profile

How to copy data from a corrupted user profile to a new profile

Note that this site fails to mention one thing. After you have created the new account you MUST log into your new account at least once or, according to Steve N. from the newsgroups, you will have no where to copy the data to. So be sure to log on to your new account before you start to copy data else you'll find you're not really copying it anywhere and feel kind of silly.

In fact, once you go to copy your data you will probably get an "Access Denied" message. This means that you can't access the files and move them because, lo and behold, they still belong to the old profile. So, in order to move them you'll have to take ownership of them. That's easy enough to do, below is a link for the directions.

How to take ownership of a file or folder in Windows XP

One thing to mention - in order to disable simple file sharing you will have to log on in Safe Mode as the Administrator with Windows XP Home Edition.

Special thanks to Steve N. from the Microsoft Public Newsgroups for the tip.

OS: XP > General
Date: 07/27/05

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