After a freeze up last night, I made the mistake of powering off my computer by holding down the power button in an act of regrettable impatience.
Upon booting up today, I am greeted by the following messages when I click my User name:

"Windows cannot load the locally stored profile. Possible causes of this error include insufficient security rights or a corrupt local profile."

followed by:

"DETAIL: The system has attempted to load or restore a file into the registry but the specified file is not in a registry file format."

After clicking through this, I finally am logged in under a temporary user account with no access to my files, programs or regular desktop display. In addition, the following bubble appears from the tray upon welcome:

"AXWIN Frame Window: HSLoader.exe - corrupt file. The file or directory C:\Documents and Settings\All Users is corrupt and unreadable. Please run Chkdsk utility."

Please. For the love of god. Help.

Try a System Restore to a point prior to your problem.

start > All Programs > System Tools > System Restore


Check disk can also be run from start > Run... > cmd

chkdsk /r

You will be told the volume is in use: do you want to check disk on reboot?

Type Y and restart the computer.

There is no 'System Tools' selection in my Start > All Programs...

Everything is stripped down to the bare minimum.

Also, I have run Chkdsk multiple times upon restarts and it completes, but to no change in the problem.

Sorry I left out Accessories:

start > all programs > accessories > system tools > system restore

There is still no system tools option!

Do you have a different profile (user account) you can try?

If not is this XP Home or Pro?

Just to add the point of the above is to access the built in admin account and create a new user. How one does this is different in Home and Pro.

Another shot at a System Restore is via Safe Mode.

Tap tap tap the F8 key after starting the computer before XP tries to load.

From the options choose Safe Mode then choose System Restore which will be the next prompt.

Thank you very much jephree, system restore seems to have done the trick.

Cool. Thanks for the update.

Let us know if we can help further.