Win XP User Profile Prob...a little help please :-)

Basically a while ago when i logged on to my computer it said it could not load my user profile and wiped all my settings , background and some icons disappeared etc... Not a problem i thought i'll just create another account cos the other one is corrupt. All was fine for several weeks then last night I shut my laptop down instead of hibenating it and the problem happened again. While its not a major problem i wondered if anyone had any idea what could cause this problem to happen? (Me know nothing )