Occasionally, when I boot up my computer at work in the morning, I’d get a message saying my profile could not be found. I’ve tried searching on what’s causing this, but gave up. Today, I stumbled onto a blog entry, When Windows Profiles Fail and Why, and it gives a reasonable explanation of why it happens. However, it doesn’t go into how to fix it.
For me, I always keep a backup copy of my profile. I also have a backup user login (with admin rights). When the computer says a profile cannot be found, it creates a new one, with a .000 or higher extension. Then I login with my backup user account and copy my old profile to the newly created one. And then I login again normally. And if that didn’t work, I’ll copy with the backup profile. The big pain with all this is that it takes a lot of time. But it sure beats having to reinstall everything.