Transfer user profile

Someone in the know... maybe the answer is there and I'll find it when I go through the help from MS again... if I make a new user and transfer the settings, files, what-have-you to the new profile, will all the installed programs work as per the current user? Reason I have to do it is the user seems to be corrupted.

Also, MS seems to differentiate between user profile and user account??? Any takers!?! lol

Tearing my hair out with this machine - first one problem, fix that, find another or find another which is stopping me solving the previous one....

So if someone whose brain is still attached is able to answer this, it would be much appreciated!!

 

If programs were installed for "Every one who use computer" then they should be accessible from any account
but in stead of making a new user i would find the root of the prob because its most likely not going to be just one user whats the OS and are you the real admin or just have admin privileges?

 

OS: Windows XP Home.
Computer: Compaq Presario M2000 series, M2045AP

I assume you mean the root administrator only accessible from Safe mode as opposed to a user with admin privileges?

The presumably corrupt account is a user with admin privileges. To the best of my knowledge, the root admin and the user level account are working fine. I'm in the user-admin account at the moment. I've had one heck of a job to get the new version of the antivirus program to download and certain actions cause the csrss.exe to spike the CPU usage up to 99% which it seems is a sign of a potentially corrupt account/profile/whatever. I was initially suspicious that it was a virus causing the problem downloading the new antivirus program but time has shown that most likely all the issues were because of the system running out of processing power from the csrss.exe hogging the CPU. One should NOT run out of processing power by attempting to choose a download folder in Firefox or asking for the properties of something! Hence my desire to make a new account and transfer all the settings and files over. I'd love to take a different and easier approach that would resolve the problem but the symptoms do suggest a corrupt account. I don't know if it would be possible to log out and then back in again and figured I'd hold off on that until I got others' ideas, particularly since I've been running into one problem after another. (Not knowing what snazzy features the mouse pad has was a major problem and source of concern until I found how to tame the darn thing! Windows appearing and disappearing, mouse jumping to strange places...)

The first problem was very dodgy internet and notifications from firewalls on my own machines (this one is a friend's) saying that this one wanted to access them. Having thought this was a clean system, that naturally worried me so I started on the Read Me and got as far as SUPERAntiSpyware and it saying to run the Winsock fix if you couldn't get on the internet. Sure enough, after a reboot it could connect and various things promptly started downloading updates, including the antivirus program and Microsoft Updates. (I've now set everything to ask if I want to get updates right away or later.) Unfortunately, the antivirus program hit a glitch during its' attempt to update and became unusable, again making me suspicious of viruses despite the clean bill of health it had been given by SUPERAntiSpyware. So I set about trying to finish getting down the new version and installing it and the download kept getting stuck partway at different places using both Firefox and Internet Explorer and trying to get the file from PC Tools and from Major Geeks - that ruled out the download file itself or browsers. Eventually I tracked down that the problem was csrss.exe spiking the CPU and locking up the system. I found that by using Task Manager to End Task the program that had caused the spike, I could regain control but csrss.exe still holds a lot of CPU, normally at least 70% and usually 99%. Despite this, it IS possible to run the system as long as you avoid various activities, such as trying to use the Browse button to change which folder is used for downloading in Firefox. Search won't come up from the Start menu but you can open Windows Explorer and click the Search button in there. Explorer windows sometimes stay in the Taskbar but can't be used or closed and continue to appear in the Task Manager. Things that have stopped responding usually appear twice in the Task Manager.

All in all, problematic and if a corrupt account/profile/who-knows-the-difference is the cause, then I'll do better if I deal with that.

I feel considerably brighter now after spending some time out with friends so I'm going to have a go at installing the antivirus program now I've succeeded in downloading it - I don't expect any problems unless it also spikes the CPU up to 99% to stay and has to be End Tasked.

So comments appreciated on whether this could be a corrupt account/profile and comments on what the difference is between an account and a profile. This is the file that mentioned the account and the profile as though they are two different things:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;305506

By the way, I've also run Ccleaner registry cleaning somewhere during this performance, probably before I noticed the csrss.exe spiking the CPU. I've also confirmed that each copy of csrss.exe on the system is a genuine file, not a virus in disguise.

EDIT: I forgot that one other thing I had done was to download the latest drivers from HP/Compaq because Microsoft Update wanted to install newer drivers - I got as far as installing two or three and thought perhaps it was a corrupt driver but I no longer think that.