User Environment and start-up profile error fix?

O

Oceanic815

Hi-

Looking for some advice on fixing what appears to be a corrupt user profile
on a home computer. I am running Windows XP Media Center Edition Version 5.1
with SP3. I have always had only a single User profile on this PC, the
original administrator one. I have always kept up-to-date anti-virus and
firewall software, and automatic Windows updates.

A while ago, I noticed on boot up the following error message, which would
disappear in 30 seconds or when I hit Enter:

User Environment
Windows cannot load user profile, loading default profile.
Detail – Incorrect Function

I had let it go without doing anything because it seemed to have no effect
on running the PC – all my programs and files were accessible. However, I
recently ran into problem where I need to fix this.

I used the “Manage†option on My Computer to look at the Systems
Tools->Event Viewer->Applications, and saw that the problem appeared to have
begun a couple months ago, and the day before the first occurrence, an event
with source “dvpapi†was logged for the first time, but the Property info on
that event does not show what it was related to.

I have looked at following Knowledge base article related to corrupt user
profiles and fixes:
KB 811151- tells about creating a new admin profile and how to copy user
data from corrupt profile to new profile.

This appears to be a work-around that will require quite a bit of follow-up
work ensuring all old settings get restored and programs operate properly,
rather than actually fixing the corrupt profile or transferring its old
settings. Also, I am concerned that programs such as iTunes may not grant
access to prior files.

Any advice or more relevant KB articles?

Thanks,
 
G

gsjutla

Since the extent of damage to your existing profile is not known it would be
more time consuming to find out all the errors in the corrupt profile.
Moreover there is still no guarentee that everything would be fixed. Your
best bet is to create a new profile and move the data as suggested in the
article. Also please ensure you have good antivirus and anti-malware
installed to prevent future damage.
 
O

Oceanic815

Hi Gurpreet-
Thanks for the response. I have come to that conclusion as well, and did the
transfer. It is not smooth, as some programs are acting oddly or not at all
under the new admin profile, and there are some problems with re-installing
them. Oddly, other software re-installed from within the new profile works
fine on the old profile now, when it did not before.
 

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