"David Banks" <DavidBanks@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:2F2DACCA-3903-4992-9EC2-4F9218719619@microsoft.com...
>
> Hi
>
> As you will guess from the rest of this post I am a bit of a computer
> dinosaur, so please bear with me !
>
> I stupidly turned my PC off by pressing the button on the base unit. When
> I
> turned it on again I clicked on my name on the welcome screen as usual.
> The
> following message then came up:
>
> "Windows cannot load the user profile but has logged you on with the
> default
> profile for the system.
> DETAIL - the system has attempted to load or restore a file into the
> registry, but the specified file is not in a registry file format"
>
> I have no idea what this means ! All my favourites, background etc has
> been
> lost !
>
> The other profile on the welcome screen works fine.
>
> I use windows XP.
>
> Any advice very gratefully received.
>
> --
> David

Your best bet is to use System Restore to return Windows to
the its condition before this incident.