FUBAR! I cannot access any of my files, just a generic screen. Where is user acct info stored in Vista? I have a Aconis True Image backup I can restore the file/files from. I do not want to do a full restore as there are new vacation photos added since the last image backup.

 

Huh? Do you have an account login still? And when you login you see the default screensave and icons and such?

Can you do a search for the photos?

 

Default wallpaper, icons, bookmarks in FF, passwords and all custom settings are gone. Will restore a whole image if I have to, then I need to find out how to pull the photos off a formatted CF card (not used since it was formated).

 

Sounds like your profile got corrupted and it built you a new one. The old one should still be under Documents and Settings.

 

Doc folder is empty, and no system restore settings.

 

Yeah. Get your self administrator's access and you should still be able to pull the files out. Try searching, it should be able to find it.

Vista still has a lot of bugs. I don't personally have it but I deal with it on a daily basis. Mac.

 

I highly doubt this is a bug with vista, it's quite stable and usually any issue people have with it are traced back to crappy drivers from the manufacturer. Anyways I guess the files you're looking for is ntuser.dat (that's my guess) which should be located %systemroot%/users/%user name% of course make sure you have the abilitiy to view hidden files turned on. Have you done a virus scan cause that seems likely to me, Vista doesn't just delete vital system files you can't even delete or view these files anyways since they're in use. Another possibility is maybe the hkey_current_user part of the registry is fucked. Can you try doing a virus scan from a cd or online? have you tried to repair the option from the vista boot disc?

 

Not Vista's fault. No problems using Vista in the last 9 months. My fault, probably. It's a dual boot system and I was doing some photo shop work in XP on images located on the Vista partition. Did a restore and everything works again, except for the lost pictures. Going to start another thread about file recovery. Thanx for everyones help.

 

you didn't maybe delete the Vista ntuser.dat files while booted into XP? that seems possible, have you checked your XP recycling bin?

 

alt+f4

















try f8 then safe mode

 

Search for the files...

 

My cousin had this problem too.

The problem was that somehow the computer logged in as the user "temp" instead of his normal profile.

Solution was as simple as clicking "Start", then "Log Off". When it got to the login screen, it only showed his one user profile, so I clicked it and everything was back to normal.

He was running a Compaq with Vista Home Premium FWIW.