Five viruses were detected by Norton Internet Security 2008 on my computer. The next time I attempted to logon a message appeared saying “Windows cannot load the user profile but has logged you in with the default profile for the system”. Once Windows has finished loading I can’t access any of my own documents or icons. I have tried a system restore and full system scan but nothing resolves this problem. Can you help fix the issue? The computer is running Windows XP.

The error that is appearing on logon indicates that something has gone wrong with your Windows profile and it cannot be loaded. The Windows profile stores all your customised settings for Windows, such as desktop icons, together with application specific settings. This explains why you do not get your normal desktop or documents folders, as these are located under your profile (which is not being loaded) due to a problem, causing the Windows default profile to be loaded instead. It seems that when the virus threats were removed from your computer some of the important profile files were also deleted, causing this problem.

In this situation it will be difficult to bring your profile back to its original working state, so the best option would be to create a new profile and then move your data into that new profile. To create a new profile, go to the “Start” menu > “Control Panel” and open the “Users Accounts” control panel. Follow the prompts to create a new user account with administrative privileges. Once this has been done, logout and then login using this new account. You should be presented with a brand new user profile. Now, open Windows Explorer or My Computer and navigate to your old profile (which should be located in the C:\Documents and Settings directory). From here you can copy your data from the old profile into your new profile, then you can start using your new profile. I suggest that you keep your old (corrupt) profile just in case in a few months down the track you realise that you have not yet copied some data from your profile which is required.