How can I recover a broken Windows admin account on a machine that runs both Win7 and Ubuntu 10.10?

Question

I'm using a Compaq 610 laptop running Ubuntu 10.10 and Windows 7. I left a Windows 7 administrator account logged in in the morning, but when I try to log on now, I get the error message

The user profile services failed the logon. User profile cannot be loaded

and I can't access the admin account. Is there a way to get into my account? How can I start Windows 7 in safe mode when Ubuntu is one of the operating systems?

I've logged on with Ubuntu and discovered that the AppData folder in the directory C:\Users\Sam Samson has been deleted.

What can I do?

Answer 1

F8 is the key to get into the Windows boot menu, where you can then select Safe mode. You need to start pressing this key as soon as the Windows boot loader begins. If you have to select a menu option in GRUB to load Windows, do that, then start hitting the F8 key continuously until the Windows boot menu appears, and then select Safe Mode. Otherwise start pressing F8 the moment the BIOS screen goes away.

I'd try getting an undelete utility, like the portable version of Recuva, and see if it can recover the deleted profile directory, in Safe mode. Download the portable version of Recuva, put it on a USB drive, and run it from there. Also make sure you tell Recuva to store the recovered files there, and not back on the system drive (overwriting the drive you are trying to recover from can overwrite unrecovered data).