Power outage, XP reloading?!?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Richard L Rosenheim
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R

Richard L Rosenheim

A client just called a little bit ago in a panic. They had a power outage,
and when they powered up one of the computers, (according to them), the
computer started going through the start up process that you see with a new
computer. From what I was able to determine over the phone, at the very
least, the system apparently "lost" the user accounts.

Before I drive over there tomorrow, I'm just wondering if anyone have any
ideas, suggestions, etc. as to what happened, the solution, etc.?

Thanks,

Richard
 
Richard L Rosenheim said:
A client just called a little bit ago in a panic. They had a power outage,
and when they powered up one of the computers, (according to them), the
computer started going through the start up process that you see with a
new
computer. From what I was able to determine over the phone, at the very
least, the system apparently "lost" the user accounts.

Before I drive over there tomorrow, I'm just wondering if anyone have any
ideas, suggestions, etc. as to what happened, the solution, etc.?

Thanks,

Richard
Click to expand...
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If what you're seeing is the default Windows screen for a new user, the most
likely problem is that the users profile was corrupted. The solution would
be to create a new user and copy the old profile to it per "How to copy data
from a corrupted user profile to a new profile"
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/811151/en-us
It would also be advisable to run chkdsk /f.

The users data files should be intact. You may need to take ownership to
access them. See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308421/en-us
 
unless you can be very specific about the screen they are referring to it is
going to be difficult to say. There idea of a 'new computer' screen may not
be what they are really seeing. Blue screen with dos -like interface
prompting to repair/ install /format, or a black dos-like screen prompting
to choose advance startup options?
It would help to know which os they have, specs, work or home pc, networked
or stand alone..they must be able to boot to the welcome screen because they
are able, maybe, to determine the user accounts are gone.
More info is needed, I guess.
 
It's not a machine that I sold them so I don't know too much about it. It's
a HP running XP (probably Home edition). It's networked only in terms of
sharing an Internet connection. No Active Directory, shared folders, shared
printers or anything like that. According my conversations with him, he's
able to boot the machine and there's only one user account -- the default
computer account. I do know that I previously have created two additional
user accounts.

It sounds like GTS (see other reply) hunch as to what the problem is, is
probably pretty much on target.

Thanks,

Richard
 
Thanks for the reply. It sounds like your analysis is probably on target.
I'll print out the KB articles and head on over to check out the machine.

Thanks again,

Richard
 
You're welcome. Good luck.
--

Richard L Rosenheim said:
Thanks for the reply. It sounds like your analysis is probably on target.
I'll print out the KB articles and head on over to check out the machine.

Thanks again,

Richard
Click to expand...
 
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