A few words on recovery media

Most, if not all, new PCs that come with a pre-installed Windows OS normally provide a facility to create what is known as recovery media. Recovery media is normally a set of DVDs or perhaps a flash drive containing a default installation of the Windows OS and optionally any apps that came pre-installed on the system. The recovery media is very useful if the PC is affected by a hard drive failure or severe virus or malware infection and there's no other form of disc image backup from which to restore. Recovery media is also useful for quickly wiping all personal data from a PC if it's to be given or sold to a new owner. It could also be used to reinstate a known good working OS if the system becomes unusable for some other reason.So if you've not already got a set of recovery media for your PC do go ahead and create a set as soon as possible because other methods of recovery are likely to be time-consuming and/or more expensive.


Instructions for how to create the recovery media are typically provided and, based on my experience, there's a wizard-driven process for the creation of a set of recovery media. This page on the HP site describes the creation process using either DVDs or a flash drive.


If you've acquired a system from a previous owner and the recovery media isn't included you may find that you're blocked from creating the recovery media because a set has already previously been created. A restriction is in place - certainly on HP PCs - which limits the number of times recovery media can be created to just one. If you're in that situation and need to overcome the block then completing the following steps will work...


1. Delete the hidden file named RMCStatus.bin from the following two places:

• c:\Program Files(x86)\Hewlett-Packard\Recovery Manager\
• - the root of a drive d:\ (or whatever drive letter is assigned to the RECOVERY partition)

2. Remove the hidden file Rebecca.dat from C:\Windows\System32\

Note. I've tested the above on a Windows 7 HP laptop and it worked just fine.

I also understand that it's possible  use a product like Partition Magic which has, amongst its other capabilities, a recovery media creation tool which could be your get-out-of-jail card in the absence of all other options.

And finally please bear in mind that the above guide must be used in conjunction with - not in place of - whatever process you already have in place for backup of your data.

A corrupt user profile in Windows 7: Here's how I fixed that.

How to Fix the Error: "Your user profile was not loaded correctly! You have been logged on with a temporary profile." in Vista and Windows 7


Symptoms

After you log on to a Windows Vista or Windows 7-based system, you may notice that a temporary profile has been loaded instead of the ‘expected’ profile that corresponds to the current user. Therefore, any changes that you make to the current desktop are lost after you log off the system. Additionally, the notification area may display the following error message:

“Your user profile was not loaded correctly! You have been logged on with a temporary profile. Changes you make to this profile will be lost when you log off. Please see the event log for details or contact your administrator.”




Finally, the following event is logged in the Application log:

Log Name: Application
Source: Microsoft-Windows-User Profiles Service
Date: Date
Event ID: 1511
Task Category: None
Level: Warning
Keywords: Classic
User: User
Computer: Computer
Description: Windows cannot find the local profile and is logging you on with a temporary profile. Changes you make to this profile will be lost when you log off.

Cause

This problem occurs if the current user's profile cannot be located or is unreadable. The causes of that may be because the profile was accidentally deleted from the system or has become corrupt. In my case I found that there was evidence of a virus infection on the system which may have been at the root of this.

Resolution

Important This section contains steps that tell you how to modify the registry. However, serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Therefore, make sure that you follow these steps carefully. For added protection, back up the registry before you modify it. Then, you can restore the registry if a problem occurs. For more information about how to backup and restore the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: 322756 How to back up and restore the registry in Windows.

To resolve this problem, follow these steps:

1. Log on to the system using an account which has administrative privileges and is other than the user account that is experiencing the problem.
2. Create a backup of all data in the current user's profile folder if the profile folder still exists. For this step I used the Windows Easy Transfer app which worked a treat in my case. When the backup’s been completed go ahead and delete the profile folder. By default, the profile resides in the following location:
3. %SystemDrive%\Users\UserName
4. Click Start, type regedit in the Start Search box, and then press ENTER.
5. If you are prompted for an administrator password or for confirmation, type your password, or click Continue.
6. Locate the following registry subkey:
7. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList
8. Under the ProfileList subkey, delete the subkey that is named SID.bak.
9. Note SID is a placeholder for the security identifier (SID) of the user account that is experiencing the problem. The SID.bak subkey should contain a ProfileImagePath registry entry that points to the original profile folder of the user account that is experiencing the problem.
10. Exit Registry Editor.
11. Log off the system.
12. Log on to the system again.
13. After you log on to the system, the profile folder is re-created and is, therefore, empty.
14. Restore from the backup that was created in step 2 to recover the user data.