New home directory created: messed up user profile? Is there a way out.

[Donald Newcomb]

This problem must be in a KB or FAQ somewhere but I couldn't get the right
keywords to pull up a clear answer on either microsoft.com or google. If
this is covered someplace a pointer would be appreciated.

I have a stand-alone Win2K Pro PC (e.g. ZOO) with a power user (e.g. hippo).
A few days ago hippo logged onto ZOO for the 10,000th time and was greeted
with a "Welcome to Windows 2000" screen as if he were a first-time user.
What's
more, hippo's "My Documents" folder was pretty much empty. From
Administrator you can see what happened is that all hippo's files are still
in "C:\Documents and Settings\hippo" but the system has created a new folder
"hippo.ZOO" and made that hippo's home. I looked around in the KBs and
figured that there was a problem with the user's profile. Not finding a good
solution, I went into hippo's advanced settings and pointed his "Profile
Path" back to "C:\Documents and Settings\hippo". All this seems to have
accomplished is to copy everything from "hippo" to "hippo.ZOO" eating up a
lot of disk space.

Before I get in any deeper, is there a KB that describes how to fix this
problem and point hippo's home back to the original path, the way it was?
Thanks for your time.

 

[Dave Patrick]

One of the rhinos might have been playing with the 'Network Identification
Wizard'. You can navigate to;
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList
locate the new profile SID and edit the Reg_Expand_Sz 'ProfileImagePath' to
point back to the old profile. (note: this assumes the profile isn't
corrupt)

--

Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

:
| This problem must be in a KB or FAQ somewhere but I couldn't get the right
| keywords to pull up a clear answer on either microsoft.com or google. If
| this is covered someplace a pointer would be appreciated.
|
| I have a stand-alone Win2K Pro PC (e.g. ZOO) with a power user (e.g.
hippo).
| A few days ago hippo logged onto ZOO for the 10,000th time and was greeted
| with a "Welcome to Windows 2000" screen as if he were a first-time user.
| What's
| more, hippo's "My Documents" folder was pretty much empty. From
| Administrator you can see what happened is that all hippo's files are
still
| in "C:\Documents and Settings\hippo" but the system has created a new
folder
| "hippo.ZOO" and made that hippo's home. I looked around in the KBs and
| figured that there was a problem with the user's profile. Not finding a
good
| solution, I went into hippo's advanced settings and pointed his "Profile
| Path" back to "C:\Documents and Settings\hippo". All this seems to have
| accomplished is to copy everything from "hippo" to "hippo.ZOO" eating up a
| lot of disk space.
|
| Before I get in any deeper, is there a KB that describes how to fix this
| problem and point hippo's home back to the original path, the way it was?
| Thanks for your time.
|
| --
| Donald R. Newcomb
| DRNewcomb (at) attglobal (dot) net
|
|
|