On logging into the Administrator account on Windows 2000 Professional a Welcome message appears offering an introduction tour of Windows. Meanwhile, a number of icons on the desktop have disappeared, and the My Documents folder is empty. It seems that Windows has somehow forgotten all the data which was associated with the Administrator account, and it starts afresh every time the account is used. All recently installed programs are still present (e.g. Microsoft Word, CA Antivirus), however all personal data has disappeared. How can I fix the problem?

A similar question was recently asked by another reader who reported that a message appeared when logging into Windows XP advising that ‘Cannot load locally stored profile’ and that all the settings and data had disappeared from the account. In such cases, the problem is indicative of the Windows user profile (account) becoming corrupt. So, whenever you logon to Windows the profile (i.e. the place where all the data and settings for the user account is stored) cannot be loaded, and thus a default profile is loaded. This only affects the user data and settings, since applications and programs loaded on the computer are common and thus are not affected by a corrupt profile. In such situations, the best and safest way to fix the problem is to create a brand new profile and transfer your old data across, assuming the old data is still intact and has also not been corrupted. This process was detailed for Windows XP in my response to the previous reader, which you can find at: www.siliconkid.com.au/sk_archive/windows_xp/cannot_load_locally_stored_profile.html . However, the procedure for Windows 2000 is slightly different, so I will also detail how you can create a new profile and transfer your data across for Windows 2000.

First, you need to create a brand new user account in Windows 2000, which will automatically create a new user profile. Once created, this new user account will serve as your main user account, so you can stop using the old corrupted Administrator account. To create the new account, login to the Administrator account (i.e. the corrupt account) and go to the ‘Start’ menu > ‘Settings’ > ‘Control Panel’ and open the ‘Users and Passwords’ control panel. In the window that appears, select the ‘Users’ tab and click the ‘Add’ button to create a new user. Enter a username for the new user, such as ‘pierre’ (for the sake of simplicity, the user name should be all lower case with no spaces). Then, enter the full name of the user. You may leave the description blank. Once this is done, click ‘Next’. You will now be prompted to enter a password. If you are not concerned about security, or if you are the only user on the computer, you can leave the password blank. Click ‘Next’. Finally, you will be asked to select the access level for the new user. Enable ‘Custom’ and select ‘Administrators’. You need to give administrator access to this new account, because this will function as your new computer administrator account. Click ‘Finish’ and then OK to close the Users and Passwords window.

Now that the new user has been created, you need to logon to the new user so that the new user profile is created. Log off the Administrator account so that the Windows logon screen appears. Login to the newly created account using the username and password (if any) you defined during the account creation procedure. Once Windows has finished loading and the desktop appears, we need to verify that this new user account will remember settings and data within the profile. This will double-check that the problem is caused by a corruption of the Administrator profile and not Windows itself. Create a new Word document and save the document to the desktop. This will function as the test for remembering data. Next, change the desktop wallpaper through the Display control panel. This will function as the test for remembering settings. When done, restart the computer and then logon to the new user again.

Should the data have not been retained (i.e. the Word document and custom desktop wallpaper setting have disappeared) it seems the problem is related to Windows itself. In this case, the only other option we can consider is a reinstallation of Windows. Be aware, this will result in all data on your computer being lost. There is a chance that the data from the old user profile is still intact, but cannot be accessed through the Administrator user account, so this should be checked and backed-up if necessary prior to the reinstallation procedure. To check whether any such data is available, follow the instructions provided in the sections below (but instead of copying the data to the new profile as instructed, copy the data to removable media such as a CD, DVD, or USB drive).

In the more likely event that the test data has been retained in the new user account, the user profile appears to be working correctly. In this case, all indications seem to point to the Administrator user profile being corrupt. In this case, you can use your new user account from now onwards, and any data and changes made should be retained. Now that you have a working user account and profile, you will next need to check whether any data contained in the old corrupt profile is still accessible and can be transferred to the new profile. Using the new user account, open Windows Explorer or My Computer. You will need to ensure that the display of hidden files and folders is enabled, as some of the folders we will be exploring are hidden system folders. Go to the ‘Tools’ menu > ‘Folder Options’. In the window that appears, click the ‘View’ tab and enable ‘Show hidden files and folders’. Click OK. Next, navigate to the Administrator user profile directory (i.e. the corrupt profile) located at: C:Documents and SettingsAdministrator. Check the My Documents and Favorites folders to check whether any data is intact. If there is recoverable data, copy the data across to the same folder under your new user profile, for example: C:Documents and SettingsPierre.

If you are using Outlook Express, you will also need to transfer your Outlook Express email into your new user profile. Before transferring the email, you will need to start and configure Outlook Express to initalise the mail store directory and configuration. So, start Outlook Express under your new user account and proceed through the wizard to setup your Outlook Express email account settings. Once completed, do not check or download any email as any email downloaded will be lost once you have replaced the newly created mail store files with the mail store files from your old profile. Close Outlook Express, and then use Windows Explorer or My Computer to navigate to the mail store directory in your old user profile: C:Documents and SettingsAdministratorLocal SettingsApplication DataIdentities{ABCD’¦1234′¦}MicrosoftOutlook Express. You should see a file representing each folder in your Outlook Express installation. Copy all the files in this directory into the same directory under your new user profile, such as C:Documents and SettingsAdministratorLocal SettingsApplication DataIdentities{ABCD’¦1234′¦}MicrosoftOutlook Express). You will be prompted to overwrite existing files in the directory, and you should be able to safely overview these files (as you are simply overwriting empty mail store files with the mail store files from your old profile). Make double-sure you are copying the mail store files from the OLD (Administrator) profile over the mail store files in the NEW (pierre) profile.

Once this process has been completed, your data from the old profile should now be located in the new profile, and you can start using the new profile as per normal. As you are no doubt aware, any custom settings you have setup in the old profile (e.g. wallpapers) will be lost, since these cannot be transferred across.