Corrupt user profile?.

[maureen]

Hi, my son has a problem with his pc. He managed to get some sort of trojan horse on it. I installed spybot and it found and deleated it. I have erased alot of unused games defraged and ran adware now its running well.
Apart from when it boots it says something about the user profile being corrupt and cannot load his settings then boots as normal but wont keep his desktop changes and runs as if its a fresh install every time. His internet is working fine and wants msn messanger to talk to his friends.But when i try to install it says he hasnt got enough privilages to install it?.
Can anybody suggest anything?.

[Krispy Kritter]

To install applications you need to have administrator rights.

You can try giving his account admin rights, but, your best bet would be to create a new account (with admin rights) and delete the old account that is corrupt.

[psx_pirate]

Yep ... as Krispy Kritter says ... boot up pc ... then click on start>control panel>user accounts>create new account .. make a new account (with admin rights) .... once the new account is created restart pc and log into this new account ... go back to user accounts and delete the old account ... done

[Scorpion King]

Yep ... as Krispy Kritter says ... boot up pc ... then click on start>control panel>user accounts>create new account .. make a new account (with admin rights) .... once the new account is created restart pc and log into this new account ... go back to user accounts and delete the old account ... done

If he/she is logged in as a user and XP won't let him install programs then how is he going to create an administrators account? Won't he need to log off then log in as the current administrator (the current owners account), delete the corrupted user account then create a new one... A user cannot create administrators account, only administrators can do that... Right

Good luck.

[maureen]

Sorpion King is right.At the moment when i go to user accounts the only one there has a limited account.So at the moment i cannot add a user or install anything.There isnt any icons for creating or changing the type of account from user to administrator.
Is there any way of doing this?.

[jimmalenko]

There will always be a god-rights administrator account, even if it is not shown in User Accounts or on the Welcome screen. What you may have to do is turn off the welcome screen, so that you can manually enter a username and password. Log off, and then use administrator for the username and try a blank password to start with.

[saggitarius]

If noone can get on the computer as an administrator, you may need to boot into SAFE MODE to get at the hidden Administrator account. There is a hidden Administrator account on most machines that doesn't show up on the normal Welcome screen.

There are two ways to do this.:

Reboot your machine. As soon as you see the screen showing all your system settings (Black background white text) press and hold F8 on your keyboard *You need to do this before you see the Windows XP splashscreen* You will then be presented with a whole bunch of booting options. Select Safe Mode, then log on as Administrator when the welcome screen comes up. Hopefully, this account WON'T be password protected, or if it is, you already know the password. If it is and you cannot get in, you will need to start Google searching for other ways around that.

If you somehow cannot use the F8 method.......

Go to START button, ontbottom right side should be Run

type 'msconfig' (without quotes) and then ENTER

You will open a new window with a whole bunch of tabs. The fourth tab from left is BOOT.INI
click on this tab and near the bottom are four checkboxes. Click on the box beside SAFEBOOT to put a check there, then reboot your machine.

This will ensure that you boot into SAFE MODE on next reboot. When you have finished adding the new account, you must go back into this screen and UNCHECK that selection, or you will boot into SAFE MODE EVERYTIME!

[Bjs]

Yet another quick metthod :

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/tweakuixp.html

Download (it's small) , install , run ... goto logon ... check the box for "show admin account on welcome screen" .

Apply ... Ok ... reboot and see (may need to reboot twice before setting holds permanent) .

[Scorpion King]

You should be able to simply 'log off' then you will see the administrators account and the user account icons on the Welcome screen. The reason it is not showing up in a normal boot is because the current user isn't logging off. Thats my guess anyway.

[jimmalenko]

I believe that the administrator account is hidden from the welcome screen if you have at least one other user account.

See http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=xp+home+administrator+account+welcome+screen&meta= for more details and some solutions.