Tag Archives: Windows 7

How to recreate a corrupt profile on Windows 7

3 Replies

Recreating a corrupt Windows 7 profile isn’t as simple as some may think. There are a few simple steps you need to take to do so.

Restart your PC to release the locks on your profiles.
Log on with another administrative account.
Rename or Delete the user’s profile folder (C:\Users\%username%\)
Delete any Temp Profiles that may have been created during your first attempt at recreating the profile. (C:\Users\TEMP\).
Delete or Rename the registry key matching your SID from
“HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList”. Check the value “ProfileImagePath” to make sure you pick your own profile. I like to add a ‘.bak’ to the key in the registry.
Restart and now log in with the account you were trying to recreate.

Repairing Micrsoft .NET Framework on Windows 7 / Vista

I recently came across a machine where .NET Framework 3.5 wasn’t functioning correctly. It was needed as a prerequisite and the application was not recognizing it even though it was enabled in the “Turn Windows Features on and off” (Search for this on the Windows Start Menu).

If uninstalling and installing .NET on Vista does not work you can run a command to scan and repair system files. Since .NET 3.5 is part of Windows 7 you can’t easily uninstall it. Try this command out and it should help if you actually have corrupt system files.

Open a command prompt (CMD) window and make sure you ‘Run As Administrator’. (Search for CMD in your Windows 7 Start Menu and then right click CMD.EXE and select ‘Run As Administrator’).
Enter the following command and press enter: sfc /scannow

This can take a while but let it run. This will scan all protected system files and replace incorrect versions with correct Microsoft versions. Once it has completed reboot your machine and try again.

If any errors are reported that SFC was unable to fix, there are steps in this knowledge base article that explain how to locate and attempt to fix the errors

How to completely / cleanly remove a Printer from Windows 7

Open the ‘Start‘ menu and type ‘CMD‘ in the search bar. Right click on ‘CMD‘ and select ‘Run as Administrator‘

When the command prompt opens up type the command ‘printui /s /t2‘.

Select the Printer you would like to Remove and click on ‘Remove..’. Remember to select ‘Remove driver and driver package’.

If you have difficulty removing the driver and package you can stop and start the ‘Print Spooler’ service. You can do this by searching for ‘service.msc’ in your Windows 7 start menu (Remember to Run as Administrator). Find the service named ‘Print Spooler’. Right click and Stop the service and then Start the service. After you have done that you can try removing the Driver / Driver Package again.