Windows XP automatic recreate a new user profile on login

A friend call me up. Complaining to me that all his stuff on desktop disappear. They were still there yesterday but some how they just disappear. No matter how many times he restarted, they just wont come back.





So, I teamviewer to his PC. Check his user accounts settings, it appears only 1 user. But there are 2 user profiles folder in c:\documents and settings.

It seems that windows simply recreate a new profile under the login. How could this happen?

Because its a new profile, it creates a new folder. This new folder normally name under the login name. Hence all stuff inside old folder has not moved into the new folder. What you need to do is, to move all stuff inside old folder such as "My Documents", "Desktop", "favorites" into the new profile folder.


Found a forum actually have solved this.

Login as administrator. When your creating a new profile because an old one is corrupt, rename the old profile to userbackup (or whatever) to a backup location. Then delete every profile for that user on the computer. Have the user log back in log back out. This will create their new profile location in My Documents and Settings. According to Microsoft you can import the whole folder that you backed up into the new profile except for three files:

• Ntuser.dat
• Ntuser.dat.log
• Ntuser.ini

Make sure these files are not copied to the new profile or you will have the same corrupt profile problem again.

Additionally to clear up any misconceptions about how the user profile creation works read the following...

1. User logs in.
2. A new folder for their profile is created based on their login name.
3. That user's SID (Security ID; unique to that users account) is recorded in the registry, along with the path of where that users profile is stored.
4. If the users profile for example, USER, is already taken it will create USER.DOMAIN, where domain is the domain you are connected to.
5. If USER.DOMAIN is already being used, it will create a new profile called USER.DOMAIN.000 and so on.


It is important to check the registry path for that user also after you have changed recreated their profile so that it is pointing to the right place, as sometimes this does not change when they login and a new profile is created.

It can be found at:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList

That is where the SID's are stored in the registry. There is a key in there for each SID called ProfileImagePath where it will show you where that profile is stored on the computer.