Dealing with corrupt user profiles in Vista and saving the contents

Assume in this example that the username is 'atiensivu', the domain is 'staff', and the user profile is located in %systemdrive%\users\atiensivu. %systemdrive% is typically C: on standard Vista installs. Replace every instance 'atiensivu' with the username of the corrupt profile.

1. If you can log into the profile, make note of the %USERPROFILE% environment variable value. Most likely it will be 'C:\Users\atiensivu' or 'C:\Users\atiensivu.staff'. Logoff.

2. If you have logged in with the profile at any point since your last reboot or you suspect there are files in use within the profile, reboot. The important part is to make sure there are no open files within the broken profile directory.

3. Login as administrator or another account with local admin rights.

4. Run 'takeown /r /a /d y /f %systemdrive%\users\atiensivu'.

5. From %systemdrive%\users, rename 'atiensivu' to 'atiensivu.old'.

6. Within %systemdrive%\users, create a directory called 'atiensivu'.

7. Run 'takeown /r /u staff\atiensivu /f %systemdrive%\users\atiensivu'.

8. Run regedit and go to HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList and delete the SID key for the corrupt profile. Easiest way to find the correct SID is to search from the 'ProfileList' key for the directory mentioned in %USERPROFILE% in step #1.

9. Logoff.

10. Log into the 'atiensivu' account. A new profile should be created. Copy over any files you might want from the old profile directory.

The 'takeown' commands might be overkill but I don't like getting permission errors.

Posted by Aaron Tiensivu in Vista at 20:30 | Comments (9) | Trackbacks (0)

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Why is it so hard to find this procedure elsewhere? This is EXACTLY the fix I needed! Thanks!

#1 Alex on 2007-12-10 12:26 (Reply)

I think the first 'takeown' command needs a "/f" in front of the filespec.

#2 Ken Wallewein on 2007-12-20 21:23 (Reply)

You're right. I fixed it. Thanks for the catch!

#2.1 Aaron Tiensivu (Homepage) on 2007-12-20 21:56 (Reply)

run cmd as admin, then type
net user administrator active:yes

Also to the top, depending on language
/d y might be /d j or something else, y is yes, in danish it was j, as in ja.

#2.1.1 kasper on 2009-06-22 19:20 (Reply)

How to login as the Administrator, if you are running Vista?

I can not find anywhere to allow this. And I think XP may be the same.

I do remember where you could put in any users name.

Now I have another site to find answers.

W. Kirk Crawford
Tularosa, New Mexico

#3 W. Kirk Crawford on 2008-04-27 19:28 (Reply)

Any suggestions if you can't log in to the profile? I've tried to create other profiles but Vista will not recognize them., Ugh! This is a frustrating problem and makes me further regret Vista. I would appreciate any ideas. Thanks.

#4 Phil on 2008-09-13 19:20 (Reply)

How do you do point 5 ? 5. From %systemdrive%\users, rename 'atiensivu' to 'atiensivu.old'.

#5 Richard Caruana on 2008-10-26 06:30 (Reply)

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

I only had problems with step #7. It said I needed /s with /u. Even after doing this I was not able to complete the step. However I am sure this is because I was using a local admin account not a domain one and needed to assign a domain user. My resolution was to just delete the newly created folder (step 6) and logon with my domain account to allow windows to create the folder for me. Worked great!

Thanks again!

#6 Liz on 2009-03-27 13:18 (Reply)

Aaron, before I do this, could you please explain what this method exactly does and how is it different from other fixes?
Is this a fix or a workaround? Does it import all my settings? I don't exactly understand what the 4th step is doing internally.

It's very interesting because all I could find elsewhere was to create a new profile and import the data.
Thanks,

Neo

#7 Neo on 2009-07-09 01:27 (Reply)

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