Documents and Settings - major chaos

[Malta Soron]

The story I'm going to tell you is very long and very complicated and filled with horror and pain, so I'll try to get it clearly to you. Tell me if I didn't succeed.
It all started with the new Internet subscription we got. In theory, it was as easy as clicking three times and rebooting your computer. In practise, it was as hard as spending three days on it and reinstalling Windows three times.
I'll won't bother you with the details except for the one that I had to reinstall Windows because the old driver software didn't want to get removed, in spite of my numerous requests.
During the installation of Windows, literally every single step of the proces something went wrong which caused the Setup to crash and me to restart installing, so I could repeat this ritual one stap later. This resulted in that Windows was installed completely twice (the first one was faulty). Finally, at the second time, I got to the point where I could enter the names of the profiles.
Now comes some background information. Before this whole chaos, I had three profiles: Jos (me), Richard (my dad) and Algemeen (Common). Together with the default folders, they made the system folder Documents and Setting (to which I from now on will refer to as D&C) look like: Algemeen, Jos, Richard, All Users and Default User. Before reinstalling, I backupped the custom profiles, because I thought they would be deleted. (I didn't format the HD, because I wanted to keep Program Files.) However, I was wrong: only C:\Windows is erased, and the profiles stay where they are.
When I installed Windows completely the first time, I got to fill in a name and company, respectively Vos and $$$. When I installed Windows completely the second time, I filled in the same names. I also got to create new profiles, and because I liked the old system I filled in the same names: Jos, Richard and Algemeen. So I went on, happily trying to reconstruct what I had builded up before disaster struck. I was working only in the Jos profile, and on a given moment I went to D&C to check something out and some very confusing things struck my eye. 1: the existence of the three old profiles. 2: the existence of a folder called Eigenaar (Owner), which probably was created during the first complete install. 3: there where more folders I didn't know: All Users.WINDOWS, Jos.VOS, Jos~~VOS and JosVOS. 4: I wasn't working in the Jos folder, like I expected, but in a folder called Default.WINDOWS. I didn't like the situations, so I again created three new profiles, called Jos (new), Richard (new) and Algemeen (new). Next, I renamed the old profiles to Jos (old), Richard (old) and Algemeen (old). I deleted the profiles I first created during the second complete Windows installation. However, their folders stayed, meaning that at this moment, this is how D&C looks like (with between brackets whether I think they are or ain't in use): Algemeen (new) (in use), Algemeen (old) (not in use), All Users (not in use), All Users.WINDOWS (in use), Default User (not supposed to be in use), Default User.WINDOWS (supposed to be in use), Eigenaar (not in use), Jos (new) (in use), Jos (old) (not in use), Jos.VOS, Jos~VOS, JosVOS (al three not supposed to be in use), Richard (new) (in use) and Richard (old) (not in use). You all can imagine that this not only isn't tidy, but also costs me a lot of HD space.
My idea is the following: delete (or move, for testing purposes) Algemeen (old), All Users, Default User, Eigenaar, Jos (old), Jos.VOS, Jos~VOS, JosVOS and Richard (old) and hope the best of it. However, I don't really feel like reinstalling Windows again, so what do you think of my plan?

EDIT: added some colors to clear things a bit. Meanings: blue = old profiles, green = profiles created first time, yellow = profiles created second time, red = strange folders that should leave me alone.

[vellu]

I would imagine the quickest way to get things in working order is to salvage what ever files need salvaging from each profile to some external location, another hard disk or if small enough on usb-memory or CDR/DVD. And just format the whole damn thing.

With that many failed installations you propably won't have a stable system anyway. What does need attention is the reason for this excessive instability. Overheating/overclocking? Dust inside the case (more common problem than one would imagine)? Some component failure, usually memory?