corrupted administrator profile

[Dale P. Jewett]

My daughter's computer is running dual boot Windows 98 and
Windows 2000 Professional(on two separate HDD's) with
Administrator priviledges only. No other users are on this
computer.

Recently when selecting boot to Windows 2000, the
following message comes up:

"User Environment
Windows cannot load your profile because it may be
corrupted. Contact your administrator."

Then she clicks OK, then it says:

"User Environment
Windows cannot load your profile and is logging you on
with a temporary profile."

Then she is able to get logged on with the temporary
profile, but most of her desktop shortcuts are missing.
When she re-establishes the shortcuts, then shuts down, re-
boots, the same error messages appear, and the shortcuts
have again dis-appeared. She is able to use her various
programs, and get on line,
but needs to re-establish/repair the correct Administrator
profile.

I am trying to help her by long distance telephone, but I
am not at her computer.

Please advise me what assistance I can give her to resolve
this problem.

Dale P. Jewett
"(e-mail address removed)"

 

[C. Bailey]

I am struggling with a similar problem. I don't know what causes it (and it
seems to reoccur in my case), but there is a way to get a new administrator
account set up. However, most of your settings will be lost, and you will
have recreate desktops, OE and IE settings, etc. Somesome suggested running
ntbackup at the command prompt to back up the profile once you get it
configured back to normal. I haven't tried this. Here's the information on
creating a new administrator profile (I can't remember where I cut and
pasted this from):


1. Create a new user account and make it a member of the local
Administrators group.
2. Log off and log on as this new administrator.

3. Use Regedt32 to navigate to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList.

4. Inspect the ProfileImagePath value name in each of the SID sub-keys for
the Administrator account. This is generally the SID that ends in -500.

5. Delete the SID sub-key for the Administrator account.

6. Exit Regedt32.

7. Restart Windows 2000.

8. Logon as the new administrator account. Windows 2000 will create a new
Administrator account.