I've scoured the 'Net to find an answer to my question, but my situation may be a bit unique. Hopefully you can help me out.
Here's what happened... My computer would not boot to Windows Vista. (I have an HP Pavilion a1630n that originally came installed with XP and came with a Vista upgrade disk. I did upgrade to Vista).
I made the bone-headed mistake of accidentally putting the XP restore disk into the drive instead of the Vista Disk. Once the restore was complete the system booted to XP, but I got an error message stating that "Windows cannot load the user's profile but has logged you on with the default profile for the system." Once the computer completely booted upI could see all my files. However, I cannot access anything directly. The "Documents and Settings" folder is locked out. I get "access denied".
When I try adding a new Administrator under User Accounts, it gets loaded, but then when I restart and select the new user I get the same "Windows cannot load the user's profile" error.
When I look through the file structure I see that it has maintained some of the Vista structuring. For example, my original Administor User Account and the other account I used for my personal files (Let's call it "Home") which also has administrator rights are both loaded under the "Users" folder like Vista uses.
Additionally, if I try to open any program I had loaded (like MS Excel) I get a message stating "one of your object libraries (vbaen32.olb) is missing or damaged. Please run Setup to install it". Once I click "OK" I get another error message stating "Microsoft Excel has not been installed for the current user. Please run setup to install the application."
Also, I can click the "Start" button, but not "All Programs".
I tried running the Vista recovery disk, but nothing works. The Repair feature gives me an error. If I try to restore to a backup it tells me that there were no restore points.
When I boot up I do get two options, Vista and a Previous version of Windows (which gets me into XP). I have the option to hit F8 to go to Safe mode only on the Vista instance. If I select Vista and hit F8 I get an error message. I cannot select F8 for the previous version of Windows (XP). I can get into Safe mode from msconfig after logging in to XP.
I've tried to grant myself permissions to the Documents and Settings folder or creating a new User Account while in Safe mode, but neither works. Documents and Settings still shows "Access Denied." Adding another User Account just gives the same "Windows cannot load the user's profile" error.
Is there a solution to my problem? Is is possible to have the computer boot up to the old Vista User Accounts (located in the "Users" folder), or move them to the "Documents and Settings" folder? Any way to gain access to the Documents and Settings folder?
I'm afraid to try to do the upgrade to Vista again until this is resolved. I'm also afraid to do any kind of cleanups like RegCure because some of the links in the registry may be broken simply because I can't access the paths anymore.
Any help is much appreciated.
Thanks all!
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