Corrupt User Profile?

I would like to know why my system sometimes does into safe mode (for no reason) and says the user profile is corrupt. I normally just do a system restore to a couple of days before and all is okay again. It doesn't happen often but it has happened at least 3 times in the last 6 months. Is this normal? What causes this?

Thanks.

 

It is not normal for the user profile(s) to get corrupted to the point your system boots into safe mode.

It is normal for the system to boot into safe mode if it cannot read/load all parts of a user profile.

Not enough information to offer a clue what is tearing up the profile though.

Does it happen if you reboot and try to log in with another profile?

Is your system fairly clean - as in temp and temp internet files and cookies dumped periodically, disk defrag run at least monthly (or weekly if you make lots of changes), etc?

Can you think of any common occurance that triggers it? Maybe delayed but something between the failure and the restore point that works?

 

Newt,

Thanks for your thoughts but unfortunately I have no clue why it is going this. I have Defrayed and ran Scan on my computer but I have no idea why it does it sometimes and not others.

I will try to be more observant and see if I can see at what stage this occurs.

Thanks.

 

Anne - hopefully you can spot something. Meanwhile, let me give you a list of "good stuff to do when XP isn't behaving" things. You will no doubt be doing some of these but maybe not all. And it might just fix you up.

Get, install, and run
Ad-aware and Sypbot - both are free spyware/malware detection & removal apps.

Open the Housecall page and run their free on-line AV scan.

start~run~cmd and then chkdsk /r on each of your drives/partitions. It will do some while you wait but the one housing your OS (and maybe others) will say it can't be done just then and ask about doing it at next boot. Say yes and reboot. This will do a complete scan/repair of your drive(s) including free space.

start~run~sfc /scannow. You will need your XP CD in the drive to replace any bad files found.

Delete everything in the temp folder under your user account (in documents & settings) and in the windows\temp folder. Using your browser, empty all temporary internet files and cookies (or you can do this as part of the spybot thing - they'll show as an option when it is done).

I would do a defrag after all of this is completed.