Few days ago I turned on the puter and came back to find a different desktop on the screen... I "logged off" and switched to regular Penzman profile, no prob. This morning I can not get access to it at all..

Error messages I get

1- "Win-doze can not load your profile bacause it may be corrupted. Please contact your administrator." (i think Penzman profile was administrator)

2- "Windows can not find the location of the profile and is logging you with a temporary profile. Changes you make to this profile will be lost when you log off"

How wonderful... I had some work on the desktop that I desperately want back.

I did try to log off and relog on as Penzman but I get the new desktop. I tried a system restore to yesterday, same thing again..

ctrl-alt del only shows 1 user, PENZMAN, I log off and relog on as Penzman and i still can t see my old desktop . The desktop I am now seeing only has a few icons on it, I have seen it before.

Now, where's my Bill Gates VOODOO doll?

See if you can get into:

C:\Documents and Settings\penzman\desktop

If your documents survive, they will be in there (also worth looking in the desktop folder of any other profiles on the computer just to make sure you got the right one). You might need to logon as an administrator in order to access the documents in "other" profiles, I am not sure.

hi'

did you check that the password had a limited time of existence?

francois

ps; solution in console for admin services and rights ...

look at this article:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=811151

yeah.... I had tried these option as well guys. I was able to rescue a few things off the desktop but some folders I had uder c:\ were just gone, i searched, also looked into all folders one by one. . I even reopened dreamweaver and tried to get to "recent" files opened, they showed there but could not be found when I tried to open. Bye bye bookmarks, website and template I was working on. Also, I had copied what I was able to save from the profile desktop onto a thumbdrive only to realise later on that all data on that drive was corrupted. Bad week

I will learn how to do proper backups on different support medias.

Formated and reinstalled Xp, went back for more I guess, sado-maso eh François?

Thanks guys.

hi'

XP has a nice option ...

you may restore the system with the Xp cdrom, boot with the cd,

same way that an install and ask for a repair ...

"normally" you won't loose any file present on the disk, only all microsoft update will be gone as well as any service pack

but it does work

try this before formatting ...

the format of the partition C is the last thing you should have in mind

it might be only missing links in the registry ...

cheers and good luck

francois

Bah. I ve tried François, same problem.

I formated while singing " Nooooooooon rien de rieeeeennnn, nooooooon, je ne regrette rien"

Thanks

PS, Redid the website, looks even better tna before, good thing i lost it.

Depending on the size of the active hard disk partition tools like Ghost and Drive Image Pro are a godsend.. I am lucky to have a Terrabyte media server (RAID5) and so maintianing regular scheduled compressed backups of the entire drive image of my active PC is good insurance.

hi'

well well ...

let's keep the good from the bad

BUT : said so many times

the only solution is BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP

use drive image, this will save time and stress

cheers

francois