Frequent occurances of "unable to load loal user profile"

[Joe Burnham]

Hello all.

For some reason, my machine (2 year old Compaq Presario with MS XP Home
with SP 4) has started giving me "unable to load local user profile"
warnings at startup roughly every two weeks. The machine cannot load
EITHER of my profiles (Admin. or user). The only cure has been to do a
System Restore.

This has been going on for at least 6 weeks.

I run Spybot Search and Destroy, and AdAware regularly, and have the
free version of Zone Alarm, and AVG Antivirus (with current definition
updates) running on my system. None of this software has ever found a
problem.

I've freed up space on the hard drive (on the theory that the problem
might be related to the system needing more free space).

What can be done to resolve this problem? (I'm not a "computer
professional", just a "well seasoned" user who has been using computers
since DOS days..so please don't make your answers too reliant on me
having arcane knowledge of the deepest inner workings of XP.)

THANKS...

Joe

 

[Malke]

Hello all.

For some reason, my machine (2 year old Compaq Presario with MS XP Home
with SP 4) has started giving me "unable to load local user profile"
warnings at startup roughly every two weeks. The machine cannot load
EITHER of my profiles (Admin. or user). The only cure has been to do a
System Restore.

This has been going on for at least 6 weeks.

I run Spybot Search and Destroy, and AdAware regularly, and have the
free version of Zone Alarm, and AVG Antivirus (with current definition
updates) running on my system. None of this software has ever found a
problem.

I've freed up space on the hard drive (on the theory that the problem
might be related to the system needing more free space).

What can be done to resolve this problem? (I'm not a "computer
professional", just a "well seasoned" user who has been using computers
since DOS days..so please don't make your answers too reliant on me
having arcane knowledge of the deepest inner workings of XP.)

I would do two things:

1. Install the User Profile Hive Cleanup Service - http://tinyurl.com/2h3yl
and test. If that solves the problem, great. If not, then

2. Run a diagnostic utility on the hard drive. Download the utility from the
hard drive mftr.'s website (or use Seagate's SeaTools). You will create a
bootable cd or floppy from the downloaded file. Boot with that media and do
a thorough test of the hard drive. If the drive fails any physical tests,
replace it.

Since you are a "well seasoned" user, I assume that you've got your data
already backed up.

Malke

 

[wd4kav]

Just a short THANK YOU. The User Hive Cleanup Service has CURED my
problem!

....JOe

 

[Malke]

Just a short THANK YOU. The User Hive Cleanup Service has CURED my
problem!

...JOe

Great! I'm glad you got it sorted. Thanks for taking the time to let me
know.

Malke