CADE

Q:	How do I fix a corrupted Windows profile?
A:	First, you need to be logged out of any of the Windows computers. When you are logged in, Windows is using your profile and you will not be able to remove the corrupted files. Next, you need to login to a CADE Lab computer (use ctrl+alt+f4 to bring up a text login if you are over your quota. A graphical login will cause the system to hang). If you havenâ€™t yet setup your CADE account, you will need to talk to the Opers in either the Engman Lab or the CADE Lab. Once you are logged in to a CADE Lab computer, you will need to check your disk space quota. The typical cause of a corrupted profile is users going over their disk space quota. If you are over your quota and donâ€™t fix the problem, then the steps below will not work to fix your profile. Open a terminal window and run the following command: quota If the amount listed under â€œUsageâ€ is not at least 20MB smaller than the amount under â€œSoft Limitâ€ then you will need to clean up some of your files before you log back in to a Windows computer. If you need help with this, talk to a CADE Lab Oper. Now, in the same terminal window, do one of the following steps: 1)If you have any files stored in your â€œMy Documentsâ€ folder or on your Desktop that you need to keep, then you will want to simply backup your profile: a.First make sure you are in your home directory: cd ~ b.Second rename the folder containing your Windows Profile: mv .win_profile backup 2)If you know you donâ€™t have any files in your Windows Profile that you want to save, then you will want to simply remove your current profile: a.First make sure you are in your home directory: cd ~ b.Second, remove your profile directory (make sure you type this exactly as any mistake could be disastrous to your files): rm â€“rf .win_profile You can now logout of your CADE Lab account. Now you need to get Windows to create a new profile for you. To do this, you need to login to a Windows computer that you havenâ€™t logged in to before. If Windows canâ€™t find your profile on the network (we just finished removing it from your home directory) and it canâ€™t find a locally cached copy on the hard drive when you login (you are logging into a new Windows computer so it wonâ€™t have your profile cached yet) then Windows will create a profile for you from scratch. If you arenâ€™t sure which computer you can login to safely, talk to the Engman Lab Opers in the office in back of the lab and we can check the hard drive for your profile before you login. If youâ€™ve done the steps above correctly, you should see some extra windows setting up your profile as you login to the computer and the problems you had related to your corrupted profile should now be fixed. If not, then you probably missed one of the steps above. They need to be followed in the proper order and completely in order for this to work. If you need to you can simply start again and follow each of the steps. Lastly, if you made a backup of your profile in step 1) above, you should now open â€œMy Computerâ€ and navigate to the X: drive. You should see a folder named â€œbackupâ€. Go through the files in the folder and look for anything you need to save. Copy the files you want to save to your X: drive or wherever you want to keep them and then delete the â€œbackupâ€ folder so it isnâ€™t taking up extra disk space.