Dell laptop running Vista: BSOD - Registry Error

A friend asked me to look at her sister's Dell laptop (running Vista Home Premium) as it was switching off when the desktop appeared.

It's actually getting a BSOD some 10-20 seconds after showing the desktop. Who Crashed reports all the dumps in the PC show a Registry Error.

I've checked the HDD - no fault found - so, suspecting a possible corrupt User Profile I've created a new user using my name and and booted into that. It's working fine and I'm currently running an AV scan.

It would seem therefore that the original user profile is corrupt in some way. My current plan is to create a new user for the sister and, using the temporary user I have copy the files from original user to new user.

Is this a sensible approach?

Will it mean that, albeit under a new user, everything should work much the same. There are no fancy apps running on the PC, MS Works seems to be the main one used.

Possibly a daft question - what can cause a corrupt user profile?

Anything really.

Virus, bad disk, bad memory. Overheating might cause the latter two.

The fact that the system is getting so far in suggests either heat build up causes it, or some delayed process or service (I'm inclined to suspect the latter.

Boot up in safemode. Same result?

Sorry, I should have mentioned that Safe Mode works fine. That's how I've been able to create a new user.

It's been running all night in that new user, including a full virus scan. So I don't think it's overheating. A corrupt user profile seems to be the most likely cause on current thinking.

Replying to myself - whatever next

A further thought.

Having created a new working user for the PC owner and copied all her files over using the copy feature in the User Accounts area, would it make sense to then delete the old, corrupt user, albeit saving the files just in case. Then recreating the original user and copying the files back to it?

Is that sensible?

Would it work?

If everything is 100% you may as well delete the old user.

I would be a touch wary of recreating the old user though, as some folders seem to retain names with the username in them and if you recreate that user it may be confusing. I've noticed this when renaming a user due to a spelling error - all the folders retained the error.

It it isn't broken, don't fix it

I would say move data files over and not a bulk copy of the user over as the appdata folder is stored in the user profile as a hidden directory.

I would suspect the problem is that something has gone wrong in the appdata folder and when windows gets to that the bad/corrupted file causes the BSOD

So a bigger pain that just moving everything over.

I have gone over to start saving my data away from the MyDocuments part of the user profile and so if anything went wrong it is easier to get my data out.

Possibly some errant software or even a wrongly configured driver.

Check your PM's.

Thanks for the PM.

I've also found another problem which I'm trying to understand.

Windows Update won't run, message "Windows Update cannot currently check for updates, because the service is not running"

However the Windows Update service is running as is the BITS service.

Also there is a line on the Update window which says "Find out more about free software from (null). Click here for details."

Normally IIRC it refers to Microsoft, and I'm wary of clicking the link...

Looking at the update history I see there have been no updates since 25/04/2012 (and yes, the PC's date and time is correct).

Clearly there's some underlying problem(s). I'm beginning to wonder whether it would be better to use Dell's recovery partition to reinstate and then update everything from there.

Which AV is it using.

Had a very similar problem with a couple of PCs that were running McAfee. We could not get to the bottom of it and in one case it was take everything off - all applications and data, restore te OS to that at delivery then apply all the updates and SPs and then all the applications followed by data.

I think, assuming there is not a lot of data and applications to restore, that indeed running the recovery partition would be the best thing to do.