User Profile May Become Corrupted After You Perform a Clean Windows 2000 Installation

When you perform a clean Windows 2000 installation, you may receive the following error message:

Important This section, method, or task contains steps that tell you how to modify the registry. However, serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Therefore, make sure that you follow these steps carefully. For added protection, back up the registry before you modify it. Then, you can restore the registry if a problem occurs. For more information about how to back up and restore the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
To resolve this behavior, delete the corrupted profile, restart the computer, and then perform the following steps:

1. Create a new user account that has Administrator rights.
2. Log on as the new user.
3. Delete the corrupt built-in Administrator profile in the registry:
   1. Start Registry Editor (Regedt32.exe).
   2. Locate the administrator profile value under the following key in the registry:
      HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList
   3. Compare the Security Identifier (SID) with the profile path on the right to determine which SID to delete.
   4. On the Edit menu, click Delete
   5. Quit Registry Editor.
4. Restart the computer, and then log on as administrator by means of the new user account. Windows 2000 creates a new, uncorrupted Administrator account.