Hello, Yesterday I had my laptop on the elbow rest thingy on the couch and then the cat ran into it and the laptop gave a not-even-that-loud thud against the wall and the screen went black. I tried to restart it, but after putting in my profile password, I was on the welcome screen for at least 10 minutes and then another 3-4 minutes where it sais "preparing your desktop". After all this waiting, I finally reach an empty desktop with an error message saying "you have been logged on a temporary profile. You cannot accest your files and any data will be deleted after the next reboot" Ive tried rebooting it 4 times and it always does the same thing and its extra frustrating because my C drive is still almost full, so I know the files in My Documents are still there somewhere but I have no idea how to get to them. At this point all I want is to save my files and format the whole windows 7 and start over (Would that even solve this stupid problem?), but sort of coughing up 100$ to the geek squad, Im at a complete lost here. Can anyone help me please?

I would suggest plugging in an external hard drive, then you can open "My Computer" and go to your "C:" drive, there should be a "Documents and Settings" (Windows XP) folder or "Users" (Windows 7) folders depending on your version of operating system. In that folder you should see your username, you can then go in there and copy out what you need to back up, i normally back up Desktop Documents Favourits Contacts There is also a way to back up your e-mails depending on what application you are using for it. Once you have backed up your data and happy you have backed up all your data, you should probably do a checkdisk to ensure your hard drive is still ok and does not have any bad sectors before continuing to use it otherwise you could loose all your data. Google "How to do a check disk Windows 7" or "Windows XP" That will provide you instructions regarding how to do this, if you do not manage i'm sure i can find some other info for you. If the checkdisk is happy your hard drive is still ok, you can you can delete your user profile and then it should recreate itself and you can copy your data back from where you copied it from.

On Sat, 28 May 2011 14:26:04 +0000, kaylla112 wrote: Hello, Yesterday I had my laptop on the elbow rest thingy on the couch and then the cat ran into it and the laptop gave a not-even-that-loud thud against the wall and the screen went black. I tried to restart it, but after putting in my profile password, I was on the welcome screen for at least 10 minutes and then another 3-4 minutes where it sais "preparing your desktop". After all this waiting, I finally reach an empty desktop with an error message saying "you have been logged on a temporary profile. You cannot accest your files and any data will be deleted after the next reboot" Ive tried rebooting it 4 times and it always does the same thing and its extra frustrating because my C drive is still almost full, so I know the files in My Documents are still there somewhere but I have no idea how to get to them. At this point all I want is to save my files and format the whole windows 7 and start over (Would that even solve this stupid problem?), but sort of coughing up 100$ to the geek squad, Im at a complete lost here. Almost certainly the problem is that your hard drive crashed and was damaged. Getting your files back may not be possible, and reinstalling Windows may not be possible unless you first replace the drive. One more point: if you do take the computer somewhere for service, be sure not to use the Geek Squad (or any other big box store). In my view they are the worst possible sources for computer service or advice. Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP

Hi, According the issue, I recommend that you may check the Registry, then we can narrow down if it is caused by the corrupted registry. 1. Click Start. 2. In Search programs and files area, type in regedit, and press Enter. 3. If prompted by UAC, click Yes. 4. In Registry Editor, go to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList 5. In the left pane, look for the folder name starting with S-1-5 (SID key) followed by a long number. then click each folder and locate ProfileImagePath from the right pane, double click to verify that this is the user account profile that has the error. Also I want to know whether you can access your user profile(c:\Users\username)? As a test, you can create a new account and check the problem. If it works fine in the new account, this problem should be cause by the corrupted user profile. Please refer the following to fix a corrupted user profile: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/fix-a-corrupted-user-profile Hope that helps Please remember to click “Mark as Answer” on the post that helps you, and to click “Unmark as Answer” if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread. ”