I am running Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit and about 4 days ago I tried to install Adobe Photoshop CS 5. The install hung and I had to force a reboot. When the system rebooted I logged in to the same account where I had started the install. The Windows Classic background (blue) appears but there are no icons, no taskbar and no start menu. I started Task Manager and it said there were 52 processes running but only about 8 appear in the process list. If I try to initiate any new task from Task Manager (msconfig, eventvwr, etc) task manager stops responding. However I can log off or restart. If I boot in Safe Mode, I can log in to the same user account and all of the icons are present. Programs run normally. I can also log in to the other account on the computer without a problem. I tried to run System Restore but the recovery point done before the Photoshop installation is gone. The only recovery point that shows up is after the installation attempt and restoring to it does no good. I have done the following: Run chkdsk -- al ok Run system scan -- no integrity issues Clean boot -- no difference Unistalled video card and installed generic PnP driver -- no difference Boot from DVD and run repair -- Windows finds nothing to repair I ran eventvwr and the Audit log says the login on the damaged user account was successful. All other message appear normal e.g Windows validation successful, etc. These are the only information messages logged: Information 8/7/2010 7:35:36 PM Desktop Window Manager 9009 None The Desktop Window Manager has exited with code (0x40010004) Information 8/7/2010 7:34:52 PM Desktop Window Manager 9003 None The Desktop Window Manager was unable to start because a composited theme is not in use Information 8/7/2010 7:34:52 PM Winlogon 6000 None The winlogon notification subscriber <SessionEnv> was unavailable to handle a notification event. Information 8/7/2010 7:34:52 PM Winlogon 4101 None Windows license validated. Information 8/7/2010 7:34:44 PM Winlogon 6000 None The winlogon notification subscriber <SessionEnv> was unavailable to handle a notification event. The fact that I can log on to the same account in Safe Mode leads me to believe that the account profile is (mostly) undamaged. Normally I would suspect drivers but a clean boot does no good and other accounts can log on without a problem. The fact that I only see about 8 processes when the system thinks there are 52 running makes me thing that Windows is waiting for some process to start before it continues i.e. winlogon has not completed the logon process. Perhaps the failed Photoshop install left the registry in some state that needs correcting. I did an uninstall of Photoshop in safe mode and the registry contains no obvious entries for Photoshop. At this point I am at a loss as to what might be causing the problem and what to try next. Any help would be very much appreciated. Thanks in advance. William

Boot from your install disc and do a Windows repair. It sounds like something went haywire but it's not easy to say what really happened. If a Windows repair doesn't srtaighten the system out, then you will probably have to do a clean install of your system and start iver.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.

Rick. Thanks for the reply. One of the steps I already tried was to boot from the Windows DVD and run repair. Windows found nothing to repair. I was hoping to avoid a clean install. If I have to do that, do you know of any way to preserve the installed programs and their corresponding registry entries? The only thing I hate about a clean install is having to re-install all of my programs and then go get updates for them all! thanks.

Is the damaged account a local admin account? Is the undamaged one also a local admin? Is this machine part of a domain? If you can log in to a local admin account try doing the following: Go into the damaged users account folder (c:\users\damaged_user_name) and copy any of the data you want to keep (Contacts, Favorites, Documents, etc...) to another location - a temp folder in the root of the drive works well. If the user has any app settings you want to keep look in the user's "AppData\Local" and "AppData\Roaming" for those folders as well. When you're sure you have everything copied that you want to save, delete the damaged user's folder from "c:\users". Start regedit and navigate to HKEY_USERS. Find the user's key in there (this is going to take a bit of digging around - find the key for Volatile Environment under the userid and look for the user's name in there) and delete the user's entire registry key (usually starts with something like S-1-5- and then a long string of numbers). If you're on a domain, log off and log back in as that user. The account data should be recreated. If this is a local user go into User Accounts and recreate the user, then log in as the user. Copy the data you saved earlier back into the correct areas of the user's folder. If the damaged user is the only local admin, start in safe mode and login as the user (you said it still works there, right?) and create a new user with local admin privileges then follow the above steps. If this is a domain admin's account it's a little more involved (you'll need to create a local user with local admin privileges or log in as a different domain admin), but otherwise use the same steps.

Bob. Thanks for the suggestion. I'm going to try it but first a question. First let me answer the question you asked: All accounts are local. The system is not part of a domain. Originally there were two accounts: the damaged account with admin privileges and another account with normal privileges. As part of my experimenting I created another user account with admin privileges (so I could try to look at the damaged account's profile under c:\user). I tried copying the files from the damaged account into the new account and had some limited success. I had better luck when I logged into the damaged account in safe mode and copied from there into the new account although a few files refused to copy because the system said they were in use (mostly NTUser.DAT stuff). When I logged back into the new account it had much of the behavior and appearance of the damaged account (not surprising since I'd copied the profiile). One thing that didn't carry over, however, was folder options. Even though there were a lot of BAGs in the profile (I understand that BAGs are used to store folder options) the folder views were still the defaults. Is this because the folder views are actually stored in the registry HKEY_USER hive? If so that brings up the question of whether or not I might be able to export those nodes from the registry entry for the damaged profile and import then once I have recreated the account? My other question is about locating the correct key to delete in HKEY_USERS. There are 3 accounts now. All of them have keys beginning with S_1_5. How can I tell which one is the one I want to delete? I've browsed through one of the keys and there were no obvious subnodes that gave me a clue. I want to make sure I'm deleting the right account when I try your fix. Thanks again for the idea.

Well, you're on the right track anyway. You'll have to create another admin user now though... Anyway, the reason you couldn't copy the folders was that you didn't have permission. To copy them you'll have to take ownership of them; since you seem pretty savvy you should know how to do this already. Don't copy them into another user yet, just park them somewhere safe for now. In fact, you can copy (or move) the entire user's folder somewhere else and just copy back the bits you need later, as long as that user's folder is gone from "c:\users" in the end. Regedit - inside each user's S-1-5 key is a sub-key labeled "Volatile Environment". Inside that is a REG_SZ value called USERNAME; find the one that corresponds to your damaged user (actually more than one now, right?) and that's the S-1-5 key you want to delete. You may have to take ownership of this too before it'll let you delete it. The corrupt data is probably in the user's NTUSER.whatever files, so make sure you don't restore them along with everything else.

Bob. I figured out which key in the HKEY-USERS hive was the one I was looking for (there was no volatile node in any S-1-5 key except the one I was signed in on). I tried to delete it but Windows gave me an error on Software/Microsoft/System Certificates/Root/Protected Roots saying acess was denied. I tried to give myself full control but Windows said I didn't have permission to change the permission. That is the only key left in the entry for the damaged user. Should I simply try to delete the user from Control Panel or is there some trick I can use to cause Windows to allow me to delete that one remaining registry entry?

There's a trick: Right-click on the entry you can't delete. Select Permissions... Click on Advanced. Click on the tab that says Owner. It'll probably say Current Owner: SYSTEM. Under Change owner to: click on your user name or Administrators, which ever you prefer. Put a check in the box that says Replace owner on subcontainers and objects. Click Apply. Click Cancel (or OK). Now you should be able to change the permissions on the key and delete it. (All right, so it's not really much of a trick...)

OK. Here is where I am. I deleted the subkey that was causing the problem after taking ownership of it (I thought I'd taken ownership of the entire S-1-5-18 key). I was not able to delete the root node (S-1-5-18) but all of the subnodes were gone. Then I deleted the damaged account entirely, rebooted (just for good measure) and added a new account with the same name. I copied the profile I'd parked to the c:\user directory for the newly created account and logged in. Windows said it was setting up the desktop and eventually finished the logon. The desktop isn't restored exactly as it was before all of this started but I think some of the files might not have copied correctly so I will research that. One odd thing, though, is that there is no QuckLaunch Windows Explorer. Neither the new account I created when this started nor the recreated damaged account have this button. They only have the Internet Explorer button and the Windows Media Player button. The other account still has all 3. Is there anyway to restore it?

Restore it? I don't know. You can re-pin it for that user though. Go to "c:\windows", right-click on explorer.exe and select Pin to Taskbar. Done. Remember to log off and then log back on so that your profile settings are saved.

Well that didn't quite work. There is no "Pin to Taskbar" option even in the extended context menu -- only Pin to Start Menu." I tried both explorer.exe and .scf. I even tried to copy them to the folder in users/<user>/AppData/Roaming/Microsoft/Internet Explorer ... It copies but it still doesn't show up on the task bar in the quicklaunch area.

Everything I've been able to dig up on this points to something in the profile still being corrupt. When you copied the data back into the profile you didn't copy the NTUSER files, did you?

Interesting. Some of the ntuser files are new (e,g ntuser.DAT ntuser.DAT.LOG1) but some are from the original damaged profile (e.g. ntuser, ntuser.DAT.LOG2 and some Blf and REGTRANS-MF files). I didn't think they copied in the original backup of the files in the damaged account because I got in use messages on ntuser files. Perhaps some but not all of them were copied.

Thanks for all the help. I know what needs to be done now so I am going to close this thread.