Hey guys, so for some unknown reason my winXP user profile has changed and ive lost all my icons and settings. Im still loging in with the same profile but i found that in system properties \ user profiles settings that its got two of the same user names and the status of one is "Backup" and the other one is "temporary".

So what im guessing what has happened is some how its backed up the old user name and is loggin on to this temporary one instead. I found this out because there is a folder called TEMP in my C:\documents and settings\ DIR and My Documents ect on the desktop are linking to that DIR.
Simple problem i thought ill just make a new user and dump all my files in the new one, but it won't let me because im the Administrator :( it gave me some error at the log on screen.

So after searching google for a solution i found a few but they all said i needed to go into "User Profile Manager" which i couldnt find at all...im guessing its because ive got windows home edition.

anyone got ideas on how to fix this little problem?

I think to get to user profiles you rightclick "my computer" and select the Advanced Tab. There should be a button for user profiles in there.

Sounds pretty obscure, but you should be able to just copy everything over to a new profile.

1. Create a new user
2. copy everthing from C:\Documents and Settings\OLDUSERNAME to the new account.
3. login as the new user and delete the old user profiles in system properties and user manger.

whoops lol

last edited by Mighty Mouse at 16:19:57 15/Jun/05

First a disclaimer, I have never used XP Home. But if it is anything like XP Professional, there are two ways to do just about everything.

- The gay slut son of a whore win98 way (which is the default because you cant actually do what you want to do with it)

- The inexpressably better, far superior winNT way (which you need to hunt around to turn on/find)

It is always worth trying to find out where these NT utilities are, because they invariably let you do exactly what you want to do in a few clicks, while the default way makes it hard if not impossible to set things up the way you want.

So Google "User Profile Manager" and find out how to get into it, or follow stinky's advice.

You should use a proper version and not a pirated one for starters

I have seen Windows XP (both pro and home, its irrelevant) delete a users profile for no apparent reason on a number of occasions. It usually either deletes in entirely or just deletes any reference to it in the system. I've never ended up being able to reuse the profile but I am almost always able to recover any data within it.

You should use a proper version and not a pirated one for starters

Back to your Stalag, Colonel.

If system restore is on, roll back to a time before the profile was b0rked. A friend of mine had the same problem, and that seemed to fix everything, or failing that, copy everything to a new profile, and delete the old ones.

Yeah thats what i ended up doing in the end and it work.
thx for the help guys.

Looks like everybody's kicked a goal.

Go team!!

8-)