User profile hive corrupted when logging in to Windows Vista

I’ve been getting a lot of calls recently regarding problems when logging in. When a customer logs in he gets the error “The user profile service failed to log on user profile cannot be loaded”. I noticed this problem when a certain windows update was installed on Windows Vista. I haven’t really pinpointed which update that was but there is a solution for this problem. Here are the steps to resolve this issue :
Log on with another administrator user profile or if you don’t have any other and you are the only user do the following:
1.       Turn off computer
2.       Turn on computer and press F8 while you see the DELL logo
3.       On the Windows Advanced Options select Safe Mode
4.       Open the Start Menu and type Regedit on the Start Search field
5.       Go to the following entry:
a.        HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Profile List
6.       There you will find the following information:
7.    On the “.BAK” file you will find an entry with ProfileImagePath with the name of the user
8.    Delete the repeated entry that does not contain “.BAK”
9.    Right click on the other entry and select Rename. Delete the extension .BAK for the original entry.
10.    Exit Regedit
11.    Restart computer.

BSOD 0×8E on an NVidia 8800 Series video card on a Dell XPS systems

Technical support has been getting calls regarding problems with Nvidia video cards. Customers are getting  BSOD errors most of the time 0×0000008E  pointing to  nv4_disp.dll. There are several solutions floating around being used by technical support.

1. Upgrade the BIOS of the XPS system to the latest if there is any available bios update.

2. Downgrade / Upgrade the video card drivers. If you have the latest video card drivers downgrade to about  2 or 3 releases from the latest driver then work your way up. If symptoms persists downgrade to at least 5 releases of the driver from the latest one.

3. Download and install customized/tweaked video drivers. Some of the drivers you could download would be the Omega drivers from www.omegadrivers.net or the Xtreme-G Drivers from www.tweakforce.com

It’s more of a hit and miss situation with these drivers. I’ve seen an article with regards to this issue and that microsoft is suing Nvidia.

If anybody has any other solutions for this issue please post it here. Thank you.

Dell XPS 420 no sound / HDMI port detected

I’ve recently encountered a new problem with one of the Dell XPS systems. The Dell XPS 420 suddenly loses audio output going to the speakers. If you check the sound option in control panel, the only device it detects or shows is the HDMI port. Funny thing about this is that the brand new XPS 420 does not have an HDMI port. Expansion cards installed are ATI TVTuner card and ATI HD 2600 XT video card. Both expansion cards do support Hi-Def output but they don’t have HDMI ports. XPS 420′s audio chip is from Sigmatel. If you reinstall the drivers downloaded from Dell’s website it tells you that the object/device cannot be found. The Dell XPS 420 audio works out of the box, PC-restore sometimes works but eventually it loses the audio again. I am thinking that there is a conflict with drivers on this system. Any ideas?