windows xp cannot load user profile

[lordrt]

Hello, I've started getting this message on a XP computer whenever I logged in, and moreover it has began to restart by itself at some point in time:

WINDOWS CANNOT LOAD THE USER'S PROFILE BUT HAS LOGGED ON WITH THE DEFAULT PROFILE FOR THE SYSTEM DETAIL- THE SYSTEN CANNOT FIND THE PATH SPECIFIED.

Thus, when loaded, it does not have all my icons on the desktop, and some apps would not work properly, like I have IE8 but its IE7 being loaded, unless I do a manual restart then log in again, then it loads the desktop properly.

Can anyone tell me the source of this error and if any fix for this?

EDIT: got also this one when logging in:

Windows cannot find the local profile and is logging you on with a temporary profile. Changes you make to this profile will be lost when you log off.

[Rik from RCE]

What protective software have you got and have you scanned with it recently?

[lordrt]

I have Kaspersky installed on both, did scans but nothing suspicious found

[jbennet]

Are you using roaming profiles or not? (if its not an XP Pro machine on a work network, you probably wont be)

Most likely your user folder has wrong permissions or your NTUSER.DAT has become corrupt or something.

[Rik from RCE]

Try an Mbam scan, kaspersky often misses things!

I have a neighbour who works for kaspersky and he bought his infected PC to me. Kaspersky said it was clean, Mbam found and cleaned 11 infected files.
He no longer uses kaspersky!

[lordrt]

Are you using roaming profiles or not? (if its not an XP Pro machine on a work network, you probably wont be)

Most likely your user folder has wrong permissions or your NTUSER.DAT has become corrupt or something.

I don't know about roaming profiles, but it is an XP Pro SP3 machine on a LAN at work

[lordrt]

Did an mbam scan as Rik requested, did not get any suspicious file from there as well

[Rik from RCE]

Perhaps a scandisk is in order then?!? Something has corrupted data on your hard drive.

[lordrt]

Did a scan disk with a tool: Active@ Hard Disk Monitor, did not return any thing wrong, and had scheduled one to run when restart, which did discover some bad sectors and fixed them.
However since this week the computer has been stable, guess it was just a temporary malfunction then...