# Windows Cannot Load The User's Profile But Has Logged On With The Default Profile



## qamersland (Mar 7, 2008)

Deal all,

i need urgent help. i shut down my Pc normally at my work and when i started today morning and put my user name and login , a windows apears with the following message.

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

remember that i am having windows XP

please tell me how can i get my profile back to work normally as before.

thanks


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## Rhort (Mar 5, 2008)

Corruption of the user profile can be a pain to sort out, especially if it’s the index file that’s failed. *SOMETIMES*, however, simply logging off, leaving the computer at the ‘Press Ctrl+Alt+Del’ screen for about 30 seconds or so, then logging in as usual, can solve this without any further intervention, so I’d suggest giving that a go first.

Further suggestions are a bit more involved.

Log in as another user with administrative rights (such as Administrator) and then open the My Computer icon and navigate to the local hard disk and into the Documents and Settings folder. Look there for the folder which has the same name as the user who’s profile cannot be loaded and go into it. You may have to unhide hidden files and folders (from the Tools menu, select Folder Options and then the View tab, then, in the Advanced Settings box, under Hidden Files and Folders select ‘Show hidden files and folders’) and then locate the file NTUSER.DAT and rename it NTUSER.OLD, then log out, and back in as the failed user. This should replace the corrupted file and allow you to log back in.

If that fails for any reason, again, log in as another user with administrative rights (such as Administrator) and then open the My Computer icon and navigate to the local hard disk and into the Documents and Settings folder. Look there for the folder which has the same name as the user who’s profile cannot be loaded and rename the folder; usually here, I’d add .OLD to the end of the existing folder name, so if your user name is JOHNSMITH, change the folder name to JOHNSMITH.OLD. Then, log out and back in as the failed user. This will create a new profile for the user from scratch. Once successfully logged in, log out and back in as the Administrator user (or the user with admin rights that you logged in as before) and repeat the above steps, this time renaming the user’s folder .NEW, and then taking the .OLD off the folder you created last time, then log back in as the failed user again.

If that fails, then the quickest way to get back up and running is to take a new profile, and rebuild it manually back to how it used to be before it corrupted, so log back in as the user with local admin rights, rename the failed user’s existing folder .OLD, and remove the .NEW suffix from the other folder, then log back in as the failed user and move any local files from the <username>.OLD folder, into the new profile. Local files would include any shortcuts or folders from Desktop, as well as the ‘My Documents’ folder.

Hopefully, there should be something there that allows you to log back in successfully.


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## Dunedin (Jul 19, 2007)

Hello qamersland 

Here is another suggestion

http://www.optima.com.au/kb/000008.asp


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