I have a Dell Latitude 600 with Windows XP Professional. First, this is a little long, because I want to give some “background info” as to a few things that happened & what I did, leading up to this particular issue, in case it’s all related.
I thought I had gotten a virus or something, because one day last week, shut down my laptop for the night, then the next day when I turned it back on I got the message, “Windows cannot load the locally stored profile. Possible causes: Insufficient security rights or a corrupt local profile.” It also said, “An I/O operation initiated by the registry failed unrecoverably. The registry could not read in, or write out, or flush one of the files that contain the system’s image of the registry.” Then it said, “Windows cannot find the local profile and is logging you in with a temporary profile.”
I searched and could not find a reason for this happening. As I have lots of things on Word that I did not want to lose (papers I’ve written and/or started for school, etc.), so I did what suggestion I did find that would prevent me from losing anything: I created another profile, and copied & pasted the files and folders from my original profile
into this new one. After that I did something else (which I can’t remember now) like system restore or last known good configuration. Something that did cause my old profile to show up at login when I restarted my computer.
I used my computer for several days with 3 profile options showing up on the login screen (I did create a 3rd one, as a backup, just in case, at the time I created the second one). Then while reading different computer tech sites (just reading, like I do a lot just for the info and knowledge), I realized I had been going into my computer profile for several days without a password. So I created one on my main profile, then deleted the other two “temporary” profiles.
I had trouble deleting the first temp profile when I attempted. I would click on “Delete Profile” (without saving files from it onto the desktop of my current profile, because I hadn’t done anything in that profile). I clicked “Delete” and then my computer would just hang … I waited and waited for it to delete and get over with, but it never did. I had to “end program” because it was “not responding.” I tried several times to delete it, but it kept hanging. So after “researching” on the net what to do when you “can’t delete a user profile,” I did something, only again I can’t remember what. It might have been in the system management … it was somewhere where I actually clicked on the profile and deleted it that way. I may have been in the registry keys, which I often do to “look around” and “try things I read about.” Yes, I know, I shouldn’t do that because I’m not 100% sure what I’m doing. But I was scared that the reason it wouldn’t let me delete the user profile is because someone had gotten into my system and was in there using it under that profile, and that is why it wouldn’t delete (because I hadn’t put any passwords on the profiles to log in with .. I’m paranoid, I know)
Anyway, whatever I did, worked. The other 2 profiles got deleted. I had also “disabled” a Guest User Account that was not actually showing up at login, but I noticed it was still “enabled” and available to use (I did this because I “read somewhere” that this was best to do for security puposes).
I then went in and created a password for my user profile. I continued reading tech sites and doing some of the things they suggested to “speed up” my computer’s login and logoff time, by “altering” some registry keys. And actually, it was a “Download” from this website, something about 4 ways to make your startup and shutdown times faster (maybe from the “Hack Windows XP” series of downloads?) I do know it was “4” ways or things or hacks or something in the title. Bad, I know, but nothing real bad. And no, I did not back up the registry before doing so. I only “altered” 3 things, I think.
Anyway, I shut down after all of the above and went to start up my laptop today. I got the windows login screen, with my user profile and password box. However, even though my password is 15 characters long, it will only let me type 10 characters. Nothing more. Yet, when I use the arrow key to back up over the “dots” (the hidden characters), I count 13. I did NOT type 13 characters, only 10, because it will only LET me put in 10. So how did 13 get there? I’ve tried everything. I hit F10 while booting up so that I get the administrator’s login, but the same thing happens – I can only type 10 characters, and the cursor stops.
Has anyone had this happen to them? And what about the other 3 characters that are “mysteriously” there when I backed up over the dots to count what I had typed? Does anyone know what I can do? Do you think my computer is infected? (even though virus/malware/spyware scans didn’t show anything)
I really appreciate any help at all with this matter, and how I can get back into my laptop without losing all the papers I typed for school. Also, I bought this laptop awhile ago from a stranger, so I have no discs to reload Windows XP Prof. or the MS Office Prof. 2003 Suite that came loaded … I CAN’T lose that stuff!!! I’m currently using my desktop PC for purposes of researching this problem. Thanks so much to anyone & everyone who took the time to read through my problem, and sorry I mess around so much on my computer and then can’t remember what I even did. Thank you SO much for your help …
