repair corrupt user account/registry?

[Joseph O'Brien]

Would someone here be able to help me with a corrupt registry problem?

One of our users ran a registry cleaning product (CClean, I think) to
fix some problems. He is one of the few users who has local admin
rights, and due to his legacy status in our company, I tend to leave
backups etc up to him, so he had System Restore turned off and hasn't
backed up in ages. Bad idea, I know, but that's the way it is in small
business land.

Anyway, after running CClean, he could not log into his account.
Instead, he got a "Bad Pool Caller" blue screen. My first thought was
to use the registry file exported by CClean to restore his registry.
However, his old registry was so corrupt that I could not load the
hive into regedit.

I was able to log in as administrator and renamed his ntuser.dat to
ntuser.dat.old. As expected, when he logged back in, XP created a
fresh account for him.

At this point, is there a way to restore all of his old settings and
files? I can see his old user folder and all the stuff in there is in
tact. Is it as simple as copying everything from his old user folder
to his new one?

Thanks.
Joseph

 

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

Would someone here be able to help me with a corrupt registry problem?

One of our users ran a registry cleaning product (CClean, I think) to
fix some problems. He is one of the few users who has local admin
rights, and due to his legacy status in our company, I tend to leave
backups etc up to him, so he had System Restore turned off and hasn't
backed up in ages. Bad idea, I know, but that's the way it is in small
business land.

Anyway, after running CClean, he could not log into his account.
Instead, he got a "Bad Pool Caller" blue screen. My first thought was
to use the registry file exported by CClean to restore his registry.
However, his old registry was so corrupt that I could not load the
hive into regedit.

I was able to log in as administrator and renamed his ntuser.dat to
ntuser.dat.old. As expected, when he logged back in, XP created a
fresh account for him.

At this point, is there a way to restore all of his old settings and
files? I can see his old user folder and all the stuff in there is in
tact. Is it as simple as copying everything from his old user folder
to his new one?

Thanks.
Joseph

Take ownership of the old profile folder data -
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;308421

And you might get him an external hard drive, and set him up with something
like Acronis' workstation product. Ideally, you'd have a domain, and all
data stored on your server(s), but if that isn't possible, make sure you've
done everything you can to take care of your company's data. Small
businesses can't afford to lose it any more than large ones can.

 

[DL]

You might want to google for Erunt, a decent tool for registry backups &
recovery, for his PC

 

[Rock]

Would someone here be able to help me with a corrupt registry problem?

One of our users ran a registry cleaning product (CClean, I think) to
fix some problems. He is one of the few users who has local admin
rights, and due to his legacy status in our company, I tend to leave
backups etc up to him, so he had System Restore turned off and hasn't
backed up in ages. Bad idea, I know, but that's the way it is in small
business land.

Anyway, after running CClean, he could not log into his account.
Instead, he got a "Bad Pool Caller" blue screen. My first thought was
to use the registry file exported by CClean to restore his registry.
However, his old registry was so corrupt that I could not load the
hive into regedit.

I was able to log in as administrator and renamed his ntuser.dat to
ntuser.dat.old. As expected, when he logged back in, XP created a
fresh account for him.

At this point, is there a way to restore all of his old settings and
files? I can see his old user folder and all the stuff in there is in
tact. Is it as simple as copying everything from his old user folder
to his new one?

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

 

[Plato]

You might want to google for Erunt, a decent tool for registry backups &
recovery, for his PC

http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/

 

[Kelly]

HOW TO: Take Ownership of a File or Folder in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q308421

HOW TO: Set, View, Change, or Remove File and Folder Permissions
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q308/4/18.asp

How to Copy a User Profile:

Open System in Control Panel. On the User Profiles tab, and under Profiles
stored on this computer, click the user profile you want to copy, and then
click Copy To.

In the Copy To dialog box, under Copy profile to, type the location for the
new profile, or click Browse to select the path.
Click Change to open the Choose User dialog box, click a new user from the
Names list, and then click Add. The new user name will appear in Add Name.
Click OK to add the user as a new user profile on your computer.

Note: You must be logged on as an administrator to the local computer to
copy user profiles. To open a Control Panel item, click Start, point to
Settings, click Control Panel, and then double-click the appropriate icon.

Note 2: You cannot copy the account you are currently logged in on. You
must log into another account.

Note 3: If you create a new account, you must logon once before you copy
another account over top of it. Windows creates the user profile at logon,
not at account creation, and it will not use the copy you created before
that first logon, it will create a user.COMPUTERNAME folder instead.

Note 4: To resolve this issue, verify that the user account is not logged
on before you try to copy its profile. If you are currently logged on as
this user, log off, log on again by using a different user account, and then
copy the profile. If
you are not logged on as the user account that you are trying to copy, that
account may be logged on in a different session (using Fast User Switching).

To force that account to be logged off, start Task Manager, click the Users
tab, click the user account, and then click Logoff.

To work around this behavior, you can also create a user who has
administrative privileges, log on as that user, and then copy the profile of
the first user.

How to copy data from a corrupted user profile to a new profile
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/811151/

--

All the Best,
Kelly (MS-MVP/DTS&XP)

Taskbar Repair Tool Plus!
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/taskbarplus!.htm