Profile Recovery under Windows 2000 and XP.

Both Windows XP and Windows 2000 store information about a user's preferences, favourites and documents under a folder structure automatically created and maintained by Windows.

By default, Windows creates a folder named 'Documents and Settings' on your C: drive, under that it creates folders with names that are derived from user's login information. You can establish which folder your current login is using by opening the command prompt and typing 'set', this lists the system's environment variables, and the one labled 'USERPROFILE' should contain this information.

Before we go much further, lets examine how Windows decides what to name the sub-folder under Documents and Settings.
It's quite simple really, Windows will try to create a folder with the same name that you logged in as under 'C:\Documents and Settings', therefore, if you logged in as fred, it would store your profile information under 'C:\Documents and Settings\fred'. If however that folder already exists, then Windows will do one of the following:

If your PC is not a member of a Windows Domain, then Windows will create a folder of your login name followed by a period and then 000, if 000 is already used then 001 is used etc.

If your PC is a member of a Windows Domain, then the sub-folder will be named your login name, followed by a period, followed by the short version of your domain name. This is the same name that appears at the bottom of the login screen. If that name already exists then Windows will also add a period and 000, 001, etc.
The reason that it is important to understand this concept is to help you predict what Windows will try and do in a given situation. As an example, lets say you have been logging into your PC as fred, and now you need to join your PC to the domain flintstone. Since you already logged in as fred, there is most likely a folder called fred under 'C:\Documents and Settings', so when Windows creates the new profile folder, it will use 'C:\Documents and Settings\fred.flintstone'. Keep in mind, Windows only creates these folders during that users first login.

Something else that you need to keep in mind is that you can NOT make reliable changes to profile folders that you are currently logged into, so it's always better to use the login of a user who has administrative rights on the PC, typically 'administrator'.

So asuming you know which profile you have been using, and after logging in for the first time under the new profile, you know the new profile folder name, then the profile restoration process should be performed as follows:

Log in as an administrative user not linked to the profile we are repairing.

Browse to 'C:\Documents and Settings'

Rename the newly created profile folder to something different (I usually add a '.new' suffix).

Rename the old profile folder to the exact same name that the new profile folder was using until you renamed it.

Right click on this folder and choose properties. If there is no tab labled 'Security', then you are done, you can log in as the new user and your profile should be back.

If there is a security tab, select it and add the new user to the list making sure to put a check in the checkbox for 'Allow - Full Control' for that user.

Click OK, and log in as the new user, and your profile should be restored.

It's worth noting that all cached passwords are usually reset in this process, you will have to re-save them again.
Secondly, the newer flavours of Outlook (2000, XP/2002 & 2003) will all give errors about not being able to find personal folders when you first start them up again. Take note of where Outlook is trying to load the file from and browse to the equivalent location in the new profile folder. Typically this path looks like this: 'C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\filename.pst'. You will have to set Windows to 'Show hidden files and folders' under tools/folder options before you do this.