fixing personalized settings

Question

Hello, needing some assistance with fixing my personalized settings for windows xp pro. I logged on the other day with my password and it said loading personalized settings and then put up a small box saying that it could not be found etc, forcing me to say ok and then sent me to a temp desktop without my icons or desktop wallpaper. After researching this problem further thru the net i did find my documents within my computer and did save to external plug but am now in the midst of setting up a new profile thru adminstrator. Within the user profile box I was instructed to click on my previous profile names and copy to the new profile,.When i go into user box it shows my previous profile but lists it twice as local and then as backup each having different KB sizes. Which one should get copied to new profile???? I also tried to do a restore to a previous date but unforntunately my restore button was off so i cannot go back to the previous dates to restore before the problem occurred. please let me know if i am on the right path or need to do something else. So in a holding pattern of copying files from old profile to new file i created. Thanks in advance with any suggestions or ideas.

Answer 1

Did you perform this procedure?:

"How to recover the damaged user profile in Windows XP"

<http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555473 >

It seems much easier than the way you are doing it.

HTH,

  JW