Restoring an XP user profile

[Iain]

Last week I found that my user profile on my computer (running XP) had disappeared. Turning it on went to a log-in screen, which I had never used before as I am the only person that uses this machine. Only option was administrator. Logged in to that and found that all my documents under my profile did exist and I could access them so that's not so bad.

My power supply promptly blew up (coincidence apparently) and I've finally got it replaced. User profile is still missing. Went to create a profile and called it 'Iain' as before, computer tells me the profile already exists. Still no option to log in to 'Iain'.

Probably going to wait until after Tuesday to try and restore it as Microsoft have announced a big round of updates, and I think it was an update that did this in the first place, not sure.

Any ideas?

[jefnvk]

Go to User Accoutns -> Change the way users log on or off

Unclick Use Fast User Switching and Use the Welcom screen

Reboot, and when you go to log in, it will give you a normal log on box, with a place for user name and password. Try you account information in there.

[Iain]

No, that didn't do it. It did solve the problem with a friend's computer though, so he thanks you.

I've fiddled around with the admin profile and got it back to pretty much how it was before. Not going to spend any more time on it.

Thanks for the suggestion jefnvk.