Problem After Restore

I have a 4 year old Dell desktop with XP SP3 and I use TI 9. Recently, I did a retore and it seemed to work as it should. After the restore, I went my merry way and everything seemed to be okay.

I have a new problem (one week later) and I'm not even sure if it is related to TI. When I bootup the computer and select myself as the user (with admin rights), the computer freezes shortly after that. My wallpaper appears and the frame for the taskbar appears - but there are no icons on the desktop and everything stops. The taskbar is empty

I suppose I can try the restore again, but does anyone have any ideas as to what could be causing this?

BTW, there is no hidden partition - the harddrive was replaced several years ago and XP was reinstalled.

 

Do you use any software to clean out temporary files, spyware, trojans, or viruses?

 

I have Windows Defender and Norton Internet Security package running on the computer.

Form time to time, I'll go into "Internet Options" in IE7 and delete temporary files.

 

LenC:

That sounds like a corrupted user profile and is probably unrelated to the TI restore, which worked properly for a week. One way to troubleshoot is to log onto a different profile. Most default Windows XP installs contain a profile called "Administrator". What happens if you try logging onto this profile?

If other profiles work then you could repeat the TI restore to get back to where you were a week ago. However, you would lose any work saved in the last week, so make a copy of these files while logged into the administrator profile before restoring.

An alternate way to proceed is to create a new user profile for yourself, copy over any needed files, and then delete the corrupted profile (if that's what it turns out to be).

 

One more comment.

I wasn't able to boot up in safe mode, and the windows system restore option also failed.

 

I'll try to log on under my son's profile when I am home later today. There isn't an administrator profile on the sign-in screen. Now that I think of it, there was an administrator profile on the sign-in screen when I attempted to boot up in safe mode - but that bootup failed under my profile and the administrator profile.

It seems to me that if I can't log in at all (which I'll try later under all available profiles), I'll just restore again. No data will be lost - everything is backed up.

Thank you very much - really appreciate the prompt and thoughtful advice.

 

You won't see the administrator profile listed on the icon-based login screen. Once you are at this screen, press CTRL-ALT-DEL again and you'll get a dialog box with a place to type in the profile name and password. Try this or try using your son's profile. If neither work, then a restore is called for.

 

I was unable to sign in using either of the two profiles that were active on the computer. When I followed your instructions ("CTRL-ALT-DEL" and sign in as administrator), it asked for a password. I didn't know what the password is. Is there a default password?

In any case, gave up and ran a restore and everything is fine.

Thanks folks.

 

No; the administrator password was entered by whomever installed Windows on the PC. You should change it to one of your preference because you might want to use the account some day to perform rescue operations on your user account if it gets messed up.

To change the administrator account password, see this MS article.