[Paul_ltt]

Hi Guys
Using XP on a HP Pavillion laptop. Yesterday XP died. I was travelling with one word doc and Spider Solitaire open on battery. As I shut down a message popped up saying Explorer had crashed with the "END NOW" option. Twice. Then it tried to reboot and hung on the Windows logo.

After trying the fixes on the HP website non of which worked until I tried the recovery disk option my machine is now working again. XP has restored itself to factory settings but prompted me to set up a user name. Previously I was "Forname Surname Home" but to avoid a perceived risk of overwriting data set up as "Forename Home". Now that means in Docs and Settings I have two lots of info.

I have copied what I can across to the new profile (Favourites, Outlook folders etc) but I would like my old profile back. I suspect anything on it won't work now (I have Paradox for example which won't load presumably because the registry has been reset). More importantly I paid for a full version of Norton which I downloaded and no longer seem to have.

Is there any way of regaining my old profile?

Thanks
Paul

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First, right click My Computer, Properties, Advanced, User Profile Settings. Do you see the old profile there? If so, you can copy everything by booting into Safe Mode, logging in as Administrator (unless you set a password, there's none).

How to Boot into Safe Mode
While starting your computer tap the F8 key once every second during the memory count up, or during the system spash screen where you see the system maker's name (HP, COMPAQ, DELL....etc.) This will result in a text based menu. Use the curors/arrorw keys to navigate to SAFE MODE and hit enter.

Copy User Profile
Right-click My Computer and select Properties.
Select the Advanced tab.
Click the Settings button in the User Profiles section.
Select the user account that was corrupted.
Click the Copy To button.
Click the Browse button and then browse to Documents and Settings, and select the new account.

If you do this part wrong and copy the profile from the new account to the old account, you will delete everything out of the My Documents folder for the old account.

If the old user is not shown, look at Microsoft article 811151 for instructions for manually copying data from an old user profile to a new profile.

It's still possible that you'll have to reinstall software for your new user account.

[piper]

First, right click My Computer, Properties, Advanced, User Profile Settings. Do you see the old profile there? If so, you can copy everything by booting into Safe Mode, logging in as Administrator (unless you set a password, there's none).

How to Boot into Safe Mode
While starting your computer tap the F8 key once every second during the memory count up, or during the system spash screen where you see the system maker's name (HP, COMPAQ, DELL....etc.) This will result in a text based menu. Use the curors/arrorw keys to navigate to SAFE MODE and hit enter.

Copy User Profile
Right-click My Computer and select Properties.
Select the Advanced tab.
Click the Settings button in the User Profiles section.
Select the user account that was corrupted.
Click the Copy To button.
Click the Browse button and then browse to Documents and Settings, and select the new account.

If you do this part wrong and copy the profile from the new account to the old account, you will delete everything out of the My Documents folder for the old account.

If the old user is not shown, look at Microsoft article 811151 for instructions for manually copying data from an old user profile to a new profile.

It's still possible that you'll have to reinstall software for your new user account.

[Paul_ltt]

Hi
Thanks for the reply, unfortunately the old profile didn't appear in the list to copy to. I followed the Microsoft link and did all that. Fortunately I found the old email with the subscription to Norton so that is sorted.

Just need to reinstall some software. Pity there isn't a forum which reminds you where you put the CDs :-)

Thanks again
Paul