Member Avatar for Craigh

Yesterday all was well. So as a treat I thought I would Disc Cleanup and Disc Degrag to keep my little lap top happy. Did that and put the lap top in a drawer - of course the battery went flat during the night so Windows may not have shut down properly.

Today - well its another story - I plug in, switch on and choose my User Name - a dialigue appears saying Cannot find your personal settings. And it can't - short cuts missing on Desk Top, email connection and address book info missing, web site favourites etc not there. For a while I thought I'd lost all my files - including photos - oh No!

But Picassa went off and found them - good little program....

IN my My Computer, My Documents I now have only My Music and My Pictures - both empty of course.

However, I found all my files and pictures - via My Computer, Local Disc, Documents and Settings, My User Name, My Documents - they were all there. Phew.

I notice however, at My User Name above there is a file (178M) that has no name other than a ~ symbol. When I try and open it it wants me to choose the program to use - I chose Notepad and when opened I could detect some stuff that looked like parts fo my email address book.

So maybe file ~ is my Personal Settings?? What would it be labelled with normally - perhaps if I could rename it it might just work??

I've gone as far as I can go with this problem _ any help out there!!!??

Craigh

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by caperjack

Dani AI

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This looks like the classic temporary‑profile symptom: Windows failed to load your normal user hive and gave you a throwaway profile while leaving your real files untouched. Good sign — , your files live in C:\Documents and Settings\<YourUserName> (as you found), and was correct that a Microsoft "Fix It" can sometimes automate recovery. The mysterious ~ file you opened showing address‑book fragments is consistent with a user registry hive (the NTUSER.DAT family) — those are binary but often contain readable snippets when opened in Notepad.

Before changing anything: make a full copy of the entire C:\Documents and Settings\<YourUserName> folder (including that ~ file) to another drive or USB. Do not delete or overwrite files yet. Then log on with a different administrator account (or boot to Safe Mode and use the built‑in Administrator) and export the registry (File → Export) so you can undo mistakes.

A common manual fix (when the automated tool fails) is to edit the ProfileList key. In regedit go to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList
find the SID whose ProfileImagePath points to your profile. If you see two keys for the same SID (one ending in .bak), rename the non‑.bak key, remove .bak from the correct key, and set RefCount and State to 0 (create them as DWORD 0 if missing). Close regedit and reboot — this often restores the original profile.

If that doesn’t work, create a new administrator account and copy personal data from the backed‑up profile into the new profile: Desktop, My Documents, Favorites, plus mail stores (Outlook PSTs or Outlook Express identities under Local Settings\Application Data\Identities) — but do NOT copy ntuser.dat files. Check the System event log for "User Profile Service" errors and run chkdsk if the disk may have errors. If uncertain at any step, keep the backup and seek hands‑on help.

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Member Avatar for blocbloc

I have the same problem. And could use some serious help, because all of my work is lost when i shut down the computer and turn it back on.
My last desktop shortcuts and documents are lost: they're not in my documents folder neither.

Where can we find the problem. I cant shut down my computer anymore because of the work that will get lost that way.

Member Avatar for HoustonIT

Sounds like you are getting a temp profile because Windows is unable to load your regular one. Your data is still on your drive, just not where you're used to seeing it. Get this software from Microsoft and run it: . There are some other more complicated steps that can be taken if the software doesn't work.

Member Avatar for caperjack

So maybe file ~ is my Personal Settings?? What would it be labelled with normally - perhaps if I could rename it it might just work??

it not the name you need to change but the files extension you need to know ,that comes after the ~ ,like ~.exe or .txt ,that maybe hidden ,i think this file is a backup of sorts.open mycomputer go to/tools /folder options/view ,and uncheck ,hide extension for known file types,this should give you a extension on the file now ,google search the extension ,like .bak or what ever it is

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