Lost my profile and settings, listed as "backup"??

[cpujunky]

I'm fixing a computer for my friend and ran into a problem I've never seen before.

She's running Windows XP and "supposedly" went to change her Windows XP password, rebooted, and lost all her settings. When Windows boots up now, it acts as if it's a whole new user account (with the "take a tour" button and crap).

In the User Profiles display, it lists the following Desktop profiles among the guest account:

TIFF/Administrator - Size=18.5MB - Type=Local - Status=Backup
TIFF/Administrator - Size=650k - Type=Local - Status=Temporary

She's apparently using the temporary profile and not her original one (the larger of the two). That profile, however, is now listed as a backup??! My question is how do I delete the temporary profile and load up the original? I tried both her old and new passwords, and tried manually deleting the temporary profile, but nothing works.

Thanks a great deal for anyone's help!!!

 

[jihiggs]

go to c:\documents and settings, delete the small one.

my computer is so fast, it completes an endless loop in less than 4 seconds!