Resolving Windows XP Control Panel Freezes

When the Windows XP control panel freezes , this can happen for a number of reasons, the most common of these.

Happens when Windows is not shut down correctly, I had exactly this error on a clients computer, a power caused Windows to throw a wobbly when the computer came back on everything seemed to be fine, until I needed to go into control panel then the computer simply hung.
It was left like this for about 30 mins, after this the computer was forcibly shutdown and rebooted, then a thorough scan disk was run, but no errors were found, but still it hung trying to get into Control Panel.

Before you start rebuilding your whole computer
One way I found around this problem is to login under a different account, one with administrator rights.

Now check the Control Panel access, it should be ok, it looks as though the Control Panel freezing only affects the profile that was logged in at the time Windows was shutdown.

Replacing your Windows profile
I tried exporting the profile settings into a new profile but this annoyingly copied over the issue, which confirms that it is indeed a profile error.

To resolve the issue backup any settings or files from the profile, the easiest way to do this is to login as another account with administrative rights, create a new account, this can be done by Control Panel > User Accounts >Add > make sure you give the account Administrator rights.

Login as the new account and it’s profile will be created, once this is done simply copy over the files from the corrupt profile.

This can generally be found at
c:\Documents and Settings\name of profile

Now copy across anything you need into the same location of your new profile.

Things that most people need backed up are the Documents Folder, Favorites, Desktop. If you user outlook make sure you copy over any PST’s or personal folders/archives, Outlook normally saves these to
 

C:\Documents and Settings\profile name\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook, now look for any personal folders.

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