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There are the following directories there

Administrator
Administrator.PIXLA09
All Users
All Users.WINDOWS
Default User
Default User.WINDOWS
LocalService
LocalService.NT AUTHORITY
LocalService.NT AUTHORITY.000
Maaartin
Maaartin.PIXLA09
Maaartin.PIXLA09.000
NetworkService
NetworkService.NT AUTHORITY
NetworkService.NT AUTHORITY.000

Why do I need both Maaartin and Maaartin.PIXLA09 (Pixla09 is my computer's name)?

What is Maaartin.PIXLA09.000 good for?

May it be related to the problem I reported today?

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Were your low on disk space? I usually see such a profile folder created when I try to boot Windows XP while my system drive is out of space (<=1MB free). (For some reason Windows thinks that creating a new directory and copying the default profile uses less disk space than just using the existing profile.) – Synetech Aug 6 '12 at 21:14
@Synetech: It's a long time ago... I can't tell anymore. For some reason whenever Windows "thinks" strange things happens. – maaartinus Aug 7 '12 at 5:28

1 Answer

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I would replace your hard drive, back up your important data now. Those are temporary profiles being created because the disk is corrupt and possibly failing

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2  
Isn't it possible that he's on a domain so some of these are just from instances where the controller wasn't responding properly and there were duplicate profiles created? It's certainly possible that it's a problem with the drive but this sounds a bit alarmist to me. – Shinrai Apr 5 '11 at 16:38
@Shinrai: Good point, but I'm sure it's not the cause. NT AUTHORITY\LocalService and NT AUTHORITY\NetworkService are special accounts, not controlled by SAM or domains. – grawity Apr 5 '11 at 16:52
@grawity - Doh! You're right, I didn't even look that closely at the account names. That's weird. (I still think this sounds a bit alarmist though.) – Shinrai Apr 5 '11 at 16:57
Better safe than sorry when it comes to data. – Moab Apr 5 '11 at 17:09
@Shinrai AFAIK, I am on no domain. I wrote "AFAIK" since I don't know WTF Windows is doing. I installed it myself and set no domain up. @Moab All the most important things are under version control (pushed to a server many times a day), everything gets rsync-ed to an external disk twice a week. What can't be backup are those stupid files locked by Windows (registry stuff or whatever), but when the disk fails, I'll reinstall anyway. – maaartinus Apr 6 '11 at 18:09
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