I have a laptop running Windows 2000 Professional with Service Pack 1 (SP1) and Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) 5.5. I accidentally powered off the laptop without properly shutting it down, after which my laptop was extremely slow performing simple tasks such as browsing my local drives and copying text from applications (e.g., Microsoft Word) to Visual Basic (VB). In addition, whenever I started IE, the system presented a dialog box explaining that an unexpected error had occurred, then IE would shut down. I tried reinstalling SP1 and IE and ran Chkdsk, but without success. Not until I used another account to log on to the system did I realize that the problems occurred only when I was logged on under my account. I backed up my personal files and settings, then right-clicked My Computer, selected Properties, and discovered on the User Profiles tab that my original profile was larger than 5MB. I deleted the profile, rebooted, and logged on to my original account. Suddenly, everything was back to normal. I've since had similar difficulties with a few other workstations in my office, and this solution has resolved all the problems.
—Peter Wong
superfilter@hotmail.com