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Hi, and hope someone can shed some light on this situation for me.

My brother has experienced a corrupt profile on his winxp machine. Now, I
understand how to recreate the profile and transfer the settings accross
etc. One thing i cant seem to find any clear info on is that, with
recreating the profile, will any photos/documents/music files that have been
saved in folders only on the desktop be copied across too or are they lost
with the corrupt profile?

any help appreciated

Mike.

"Michael Dodsworth" <> wrote:

>One thing i cant seem to find any clear info on is that, with
>recreating the profile, will any photos/documents/music files that have been
>saved in folders only on the desktop be copied across too or are they lost
>with the corrupt profile?

If I understand your question properly.

No, a corrupt user profile is due to an error writing to the:
• Ntuser.dat
• Ntuser.dat.log
• Ntuser.ini

And why you don't copy them. Nothing else is lost, and can be copied
at your leisure

http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;811151
I see MS it improving their look...


--

http://www.onahorse.com/

Michael Dodsworth wrote:

> Hi, and hope someone can shed some light on this situation for me.
>
> My brother has experienced a corrupt profile on his winxp machine. Now, I
> understand how to recreate the profile and transfer the settings accross
> etc. One thing i cant seem to find any clear info on is that, with
> recreating the profile, will any photos/documents/music files that have
> been saved in folders only on the desktop be copied across too or are they
> lost with the corrupt profile?
>
The profile is stored in the ntuser.* files at the top of the users
datastore, you will have to unhide (folder properties - show system,
hidden) them first as admin before you can rename/delete them as admin.
Upon next logon as user, a new profile path will be generated, most of the
time with computername or something like .001 appended. But still all the
data is there in the old path and can be copied/moved over.

On Apr 27, 8:25*pm, Pennyw...@DerryMaine.Gov wrote:
> *"Michael Dodsworth" <inva...@invalid.blueegg> wrote:
>
> >One thing i cant seem to find any clear info on is that, with
> >recreating the profile, will any photos/documents/music files that have been
> >saved in folders only on the desktop be copied across too or are they lost
> >with the corrupt profile?
>
> If I understand your question properly.
>
> No, a corrupt user profile is due to an error writing to the:
> • * * Ntuser.dat
> • * * Ntuser.dat.log
> • * * Ntuser.ini
>
> And why you don't copy them. Nothing else is lost, and can be copied
> at your leisure
>
> http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;811151
> I see MS it improving their look...
>
> --
>
> http://www.onahorse.com/

If you use some Microsoft user migration tool then it should copy all
of your Desktop items. I've not heard of one though, so I suspect you
are doing it by hand. In that case:

1. Your desktop items (most of them) are stored at C:\Documents &
Settings\%username%\Desktop. So you just need to copy it from one
user (put the username in for %username%) to the other user. I said
most of them, because there are actually some things in C:\Documents &
Settings\All Users\Desktop. How these are handled is that All User's
desktop items are just merged with your desktop items on the actual
desktop that you end up seeing.

2. My Documents is handled in much the same manner as Desktop. There
is not a All User's My Documents though, I think.

3. If you are manually copying the profile stuff (create a new user
and then copy files between the folders I mentioned in 1 and 2) there
are some things you won't want to copy. If you copy the registry
files, then some paths get messed up and it will think your new user's
My Documents folder is actually in the old user's My Documents folder,
and you will have files going every-which-way. To be safe, just copy
Desktop and My Documents. My Documents contains My Videos, My
Pictures, etc. inside of it, which is kind of weird when you think
about it. This is fixed in Vista, as Videos, Pictures, etc. each get
their own folder on the same level as Desktop and Documents do (no
more "My" prefixes either!).

4. Permissions might bite you while you are copying files. Unless
your new user is an administrator, you will not be able to access the
files of the old user while you are logged in as the new user (and
vice-versa).

Hope that helps you. Windows profiles are some tricky beasts.

Aaron

"wisdomkiller & pain" <> wrote in
message news: ...
> Michael Dodsworth wrote:
>
>> Hi, and hope someone can shed some light on this situation for me.
>>
>> My brother has experienced a corrupt profile on his winxp machine. Now, I
>> understand how to recreate the profile and transfer the settings accross
>> etc. One thing i cant seem to find any clear info on is that, with
>> recreating the profile, will any photos/documents/music files that have
>> been saved in folders only on the desktop be copied across too or are
>> they
>> lost with the corrupt profile?
>>
> The profile is stored in the ntuser.* files at the top of the users
> datastore, you will have to unhide (folder properties - show system,
> hidden) them first as admin before you can rename/delete them as admin.
> Upon next logon as user, a new profile path will be generated, most of the
> time with computername or something like .001 appended. But still all the
> data is there in the old path and can be copied/moved over.
>

Thanks to all for the advice, I shall attempt this tomorrow.
Many thanks

Mike