Incorrect Profile Loading
September 11, 2008
If you have found yourself logging into your computer only to find that all of your desktop shortcuts are missing and your background isn’t the same, chances are Windows loaded the wrong user profile for you. Most times the profile that is loaded is a Temporary user profile. You can find out which profile you have loaded by Right-Clicking on the Start button and Clicking Explore. 
As you can see, I have loaded the Administrator Profile.
Your profile that loads should be similar to your login name. For example, John Smith logs in as jsmith and should have profile called jsmith located under /Documents and Settings. If he logs into a domain, such as, “business”, he may see jsmith.business as his profile. It depends whether or not he logged in as jsmith on the local computer and the domain.
What happens if the profile I loaded is not my usual?
You can follow these steps to ensure the next time you log into your machine you load the correct profile.
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1. Click Start > Run type Regedit press Enter
2.
3. On the left hand side navigate to the following registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SOFTWARE > MICROSOFT > WINDOWS NT > CURRENT VERSION > PROFILE LIST
4. Select the folder where your profile image path is located. (i.e. jsmith)
5.
6. Double-Click ProfileImagePath and change the path to the correct profile which user JSMITH should open.
7.
8. Click OK and exit from the registry editor.
9. The user must logoff and log back in for the changes to take effect.
If you never want this to happen again and are looking for a permanent solution, you can try the following hack…
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1. Save the Profile List registry key to a location on your hard drive by Right-Clicking and selecting Export.
- Click Start > Run Type gpedit.msc > Enter
- Navigate to Computer Configuration \ Windows Settings \ Startup Script
- Add the location of the batch file to the startup script policy.
2. Create a Batch File with the following information:
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reg import C:\path\name.reg (Where you define the path and name.)
3. Add the batch file to your start-up script by editing the local computer group policy.
That’s it!
Cramped C: Partition? - Move your pagefile.
July 11, 2008
Ok, so here’s the scenario, you created a partition when you installed Windows, but you made the C: (or Windows) partition too small. Now you don’t have space to temporarily download files, defragment (requires %15 free disk space), or even add additional programs. What to do? You don’t want to rebuild the machine!
Answer
Well there are a couple of things you can do. Both of which include buying an additional hard drive, if you don’t already have one.
1. Start changing your install path for new software installs to your new additional drive. (i.e. D:\Program_Files\newsoftware)
2. Move your pagefile.sys to the new drive. (This is what we will be focusing on.)
Moving your Pagefile.sys
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1. Click Start > Run Type Regedit and Press Enter
2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management
3. Double-Click the PagingFiles entry on the right-hand side of the screen.
4. Now enter the new path where you want the pagefile to reside. (In this case it will be located on our separate drive D:/pagefile.sys)
5. Once you have successfully edited the path, you will need to restart the computer before the changes will take effect.
6. After you have restarted you can now navigate to your old pagefile location (C:\pagefile.sys) and delete it.
Moving the pagefile is not always recommended and moving it to a separate drive is not a best practice, try to remember to give yourself enough room for the next partition you create!
Opening Lotus Worksheets (.wk1) in Excel 2003 SP3
July 7, 2008
If you have recently applied the service pack 3 patch sent out by Microsoft, then you may not be able to open Lotus worksheets that were previously accessible. Service pack 3 introduced a restriction on opening these file types without creating a setting for it in the registry. If you try to open a .wk1 file extension you may have received the following error message:
You are attempting to open a file type that is blocked by your registry policy setting.
The fix for this is simple. (but shouldn’t be necessary! -Microsoft-)
1. Click Start > Run and Type Regedit > Press Enter
2. Navigate to: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Excel\Security\FileOpenBlock
3. If FileOpenBlock does not exists you will need to create it by highlighting the Security subkey and on the Edit menu, selecting New > Key
4. Type FileOpenBlock and Press Enter
5. Point to New on the Edit menu, and then click DWORD Value.
6. Type the DWORD name that you want to restrict, and then press ENTER. In this case type LotusandQuattroFiles
7. Right-click the DWORD name that you typed in step 6, and then click Modify.
8. In the Value data box, type 0, and then click OK.
9. On the File menu, click Exit to exit Registry Editor.
By adding a DWORD value of 0 for the LotusandQuattroFiles name, you are forcing acceptance of those file types in MS Excel. If you want to restrict those file types in the future, simply change the DWORD value to 1.
The following table contains the DWORD names that an administrator can add to the registry to restrict certain file types by using the FileOpenBlock subkey. Additionally, the table contains the corresponding file types that are restricted.
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