Profile wont load - its the only one on the comp

Probably a virus attack or a malfunction caused by OS automatic update. It has the symptoms of a virus because other profile failures caused by automatic update have rarely been reported.

A. Obtain high quality anti virus disk, Norton and Panda are two that will work, there may be others, make sure internet is connected, insert disk in drive, start computer, disk will update, scan and neutralize virus in many cases. If virus is detected, the security you are using now did not work very well?

B. Install hard drive in another XP computer, which has high quality anti virus installed, use functional computer to scan and repair damaged drive. Use functional computer to backup your personal files from the damaged disk, it usually works. Put your back ups on CD or DVD, or an online backup service such as Mozy, the first 2 GB are free.

C. If high quality updated virus scan shows negative, use original operating system disk to do repair install of XP operating system, without reformatting the drive, does not erase your personal files. Use your original system and hardware disks to load drivers after you repair install, if needed. The directions are posted in Tom's XP forum, fourth post from the top. If you do not have all your drivers, you may need to download them from the manufacturer's website. Use only drivers provided by the manufacturer, do not use drivers offered by other sources.

D. In case the repair install does not work, if a virus is un- removable, follow directions in (B) above to back up your personal files, use an XP disk to reformat the drive, and do a fresh install. Load drivers as described in (C), load your backed up files, resume driving.

And now your moment of Zen, a quote from Google:
"Google says its automated scans of the Internet recently turned up malware on roughly 300,000 Web sites, double the number it recorded two years ago. Each site can contain many infected pages. Meanwhile, Malware doubled last year, to 240 million unique attacks, according to Symantec, a maker of security software. And that does not count the scourge of fake antivirus software and other scams".

Hi, Thank you for the information. I do not know how to step C and I do not have the original discs because I bought it refurbished over a year ago. So I am just SOL then it sounds like. I also have no antivirus disc - it recently expired and I am currently looking for work so I have no way to go purchase one. But..I will try to do that one in the future I guess.

Thank you for your time I really appreciate it.

you can still recover your files and make a backup in a friends computer, you take your hard drive out and plug it in to another XP computer. You will need to spend a bit to fix up your own it sounds like. You can just buy a new XP pro disk from like, amazon, and do it later. A new disk will recover your old system without erasing the files.