Administrator logon problem

[samsmom]

I've read several posts that are similar to my problem and I am going
to try a posted solution, but just to be sure, here is my problem and
if anyone can verify/help, please!!!
I help my chiropractor with her computers and they have a really
strange problem that I've never seen before. I can only describe what
they told me and what I have seen. It is on a Windows 2000 computer
with one user - administrator . All was going well, until one day
when the computer booted up, the administrator's profile completely
changed. The wallpaper was gone - just a blue screen and although you
can select to change the wallpaper, it will not. The entire desktop
was different and from some programs, printing does not work. They
mentioned that they saw some weird messages, but of course, cannot
tell me what they were. The strange thing that I see is that there is
now 2 user folders - administrator and administrator.COMPUTERNAME.
Even though the login is for 'administrator' it looks like the
administrator.COMPUTERNAME profile is being used and it has some weird
restrictions. I have no clue how this happened. Any ideas? I did
notice that some Windows Security updates were applied that same
morning - coincidence? Could this have an effect?
After reading some posts, it sounds like I can just copy everything
from the 'administrator' user to the 'administrator.COMPUTERNAME' and
things should be back to normal? OR can I just delete the
administrator.COMPUTERNAME user and folders? I read that this was
possible. I am going to try both options, but if anyone can shed some
light on this, I would appreciate it greatly.

 

[Lincoln De Kalb]

Sounds like a corruption of the User SID. I've seen it before but couldn't
tell you what caused it...

You wont be able to copy the profiles while you are logged in.

Create a new user and add that user to the local admin's group. Log in with
that user.

You can simply copy in windows explorer (messy) or use the UI under control
panel > system > advanced > user profiles and select the profile to copy.

To be sure you dont lose anything, i'd manually copy out both profiles to
the temp directory, just to guard against accidently overwriting the
profiles.