Lost user account

NiGHTSNiGHTS San Diego Icrontian
edited June 2009 in Science & Tech
Hi all,


Not entirely sure how to phrase this, but here goes... This morning I turned on the computer to find that windows was unable to load my user account after attempting to log in. I ultimately created a 'new' user account when logging in, and Windows now looks like a fresh install.

From what I can tell, I'm able to navigate to C:\Documents and Settings\ to find the 'old' user account that windows is unable to load properly. Is there any way to manipulate this 'new' account so that it takes the setup of the old?

At the very least, is there some way to recover my firefox bookmarks?

Thank you in advance.

Comments

  • QCHQCH Ancient Guru Chicago Area - USA Icrontian
    edited May 2009
    Odds are, your profile's portion of the registry got corrupt. All the files are there... you COULD copy the NTUSER.DAT from the default profile into the old profile and it should work but all your settings would be gone.

    If you want to try this, restart in safe mode and login to the administrator. Copy the NTUSER.DAT from Default User to the old Profile, restart and login to the old account.

    As for the mozilla bookmark. c:\\documents and settings\{profile name}\application data\mozilla\firefox\profiles\{some gibberish directory name}\bookmarks.html.
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited May 2009
    Boot to linux and copy the entire contents of your old profile folder into the new folder. It's about the best you can do.
  • NiGHTSNiGHTS San Diego Icrontian
    edited May 2009
    Ugh, what a headache. Thanks you guys.
  • kryystkryyst Ontario, Canada
    edited June 2009
    He shouldn't have to boot to linux to do that, there should be an administrative account that he can flip to in windows and do the same thing.
  • CycloniteCyclonite Tampa, Florida Icrontian
    edited June 2009
    What kryyst said. Sometimes, though, had you just rebooted again and logged into that account, it may have come up properly. I used to get at least one call a week for this around here.
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited June 2009
    kryyst wrote:
    He shouldn't have to boot to linux to do that, there should be an administrative account that he can flip to in windows and do the same thing.

    Windows likes to keep a lock on certain files in user profiles, regardless of whether or not the account is actually active. Rather than deal with the possibility, I just avoided it entirely.
  • CycloniteCyclonite Tampa, Florida Icrontian
    edited June 2009
    I've found that if you reboot, and the account doesn't login at all, the copy works fine.
  • willschillinwillschillin 18944
    edited June 2009
    I would copy the profile folders over manually. Local, App Data, Favs, Desktop, My Docs...I've seen corrupt profiles be corrupt due to file name length.

    If you can't use FASTWIZ.exe, then manually copy is the only way I know how to do this. of course FASTWIZ.EXE would copy the entire profile over, but you may not want that.
  • kryystkryyst Ontario, Canada
    edited June 2009
    Cyclonite wrote:
    I've found that if you reboot, and the account doesn't login at all, the copy works fine.

    Ditto. If you reboot and log in as admin the other accounts won't have locks on them and you can copy them freely.
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