missing profile, missing data...

[ocouzin]

I came back from vacation, and my computer seems to have forgotten who
I am -- on start-up, it gives a strange message about not being able to
log in to my profile (though it's the admin profile), and will log in
to a "temporary profile" instead. Unfortuantely, all settings from
Outlook had disappeard, and "My Documents" was completely wiped clean
as well. On further investigation, the docs were inside the C:// drive
--- but updating the outlook settings and re-copying the docs into the
folder was no use, because when we restarted the computer it was all
gone again.

Now an even worse problem has arisen - I accidentally "moved" (I
thought I was "copying", but apparently not) some important files into
the "My Documents" folder, and now they're gone.

The files must be there somewhere, right? I downloaded some shareware
to scan for deleted/missing files, but no luck, none of the files were
there. Can anyone help?

Thanks!

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi,

Your original profile is corrupt, you need to create a new one for yourself
and copy the old one into it. Follow the steps here:

How to Copy User Data to a New User Profile
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=811151

Note that one step not listed in the article is that after creating the
destination profile you must log into it once first to create the necessary
file structure before you do the copy procedure.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

 

[ocouzin]

Thanks Rick. The profile problem is solved!
Unfortunately, there is an after-effect - some files were transfered to
"My Documents" during the temporary profile stage, and then disappeared
on start up (the process is described very well here:
http://groups.google.com/group/micr...1f3f96f76f7b9da?sa=X&oi=groupsr&start=1&num=2

Do you know if there is any clean way of recovering them, short of
taking the hard drive out and finding somebody with some nice recovery
software?

thanks!
Odilon

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi,

Not one I know of, no.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org