Posted on 05/23/2008 10:02:03 AM PDT by ml/nj
I suggest Vista users pay attention.
From time to time I help neighbors with their computer problems, and sometimes they have MS Vista systems. I have, so far, avoided Vista myself mostly because I see no reason to abandon XP and because of the bad press Vista has received. I have, or have had, a generally favorable impression of Microsoft; and my first instinct has been to blame the bad press on user ineptitude and/or extreme corner cases.
BUT ...
I got a call several weeks ago from a woman who couldn't log on to her system. She got a message like, "The User Profile Service failed the logon. User profile cannot be loaded." I didn't actually know what the message was until I got there myself. This woman is an unsophisticated, minimalist user of her system, and her telephone description of the problem was also minimalist. The system is a Vista system. She was the only user account shown on the startup screen. I couldn't log on either.
Maybe I tried some other stuff, but I eventually discovered I could boot up in Safe Mode, and in Safe Mode I could log on to her account, or something that seemed like her account. I forget now exactly what I did but I was able to create a new user account for her and then boot Vista normally and log on to the account.
When I got home I did some searching on the internet; and I found out that this woman was hardly alone. There was information about how to retrieve the old user profile which Vista had renamed to a .bak. I called to let her know that I could do try this for her if she wanted me to.
Last week she called again to let me know that she couldn't find some file or other and I told her that I would be passing by her home and I would stop by and find her file.
I couldn't find it either. ALL OF THE FILES IN HER "MY DOCUMENTS" FOLDER WERE GONE ALONG WITH THE OLD USER PROFILE. I said I would find those instructions for restoring the old profile and come back at some mutually convenient time.
Today was the day. I turned on her computer and BOOM, I couldn't log on again. The new user I had created for her had disappeared too. And unfortunately that new user was her name just like the original one. So now when I went to retrieve the renamed profile I was retrieving the intermediate one. Her original was gone because when Vista renamed the second profile it renamed it to the same name as the original backup.
Maybe you followed this. Maybe you didn't. The bottom line is that Microsoft has either a BS explanation for why this happens or they admit they haven't a clue. This has to be a very common thing if it has happened twice in the past month to someone who basically uses her computer as an email machine. IT IS OBSCENE THAT MICROSOFT IS ALLOWING THIS PROBLEM TO PERSIST WITHOUT RECALLING VISTA ALTOGETHER.
My advice to anyone using Vista is to make sure that you do not store anything in any folder that is associated with your username such as the "My Documents" folder or your "Desktop." I also recommend that you find and print the instructions for modifying the Registry to retrieve the mysteriously renamed profile.
My advice to anyone not using Vista is STICK TO XP.
ML/NJ
ML/NJ
People get kind of testy when they feel you have insulted their intelligence.
I know how annoyed I get when someone is giving me advice when the subject is outside their area of competence and inside mine. I’ve also had people justifiably annoyed with me for being the incompetent advise giver. The best thing to do at that point is acknowledge they know what they are talking about and thank them for the education.
This was good advice especially on Windows 98. Clearing out the My Documents folder also sped up performance.
There's a known problem where the registry was unable to be unloaded while the user is logging out, so Windows had to "force" the unload, and this would occasionally corrupt the profile. There's a fix for Windows 2000, XP, and Server 2003, the "User Profile Hive Cleaner". The problem usually presents itself (before corrupting the profile) as extremely slow logouts, and if you check the system event log, you'll see messages that the registry hive was unable to unload. I wonder if there's a similar problem with Vista, but then the UPHC isn't set up to work with Vista.
Mark
I am so happy my family has gone 100% Mac and will never again have to deal with this crap. My mom has been using an iMac for her e-mail and Internet surfing for seven years now, without one single hiccup in all that time.
You might want to check out this blog on the beta version of UPHClean (User Profile Hive Cleaner):
http://blogs.technet.com/uphclean
the problem sounds like the same sort of problem that was often fixed by UPHC. This problem has been around nearly as long as Windows 2000! However, according to the blog, UPHClean functionality was built into Vista natively.
Though I mentioned it in another post, one of the causes of corrupted user profiles is something keeping the user hive of the registry from unloading cleanly - something is still accessing it - so Windows has to force it closed when you logout. This presents itself by very long times to logout - I’ve seen as long as 3 minutes on Windows 2000. The current version of UPHC (1.6, I think) is for Win2K, XP, and Server 2003. When the hive becomes corrupted, Windows is forced to create a new user profile, with all new user settings (the user hive of the registry).
Anyway, here’s a link to the current version of UPHClean, although it won’t work on Vista - The latest beta (refer to the blog, above) might:
Mark
ML/NJ
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