Windows XP Corrupted User Profile

[Oseirus]

On vacation working on my mother's 10+ year old Dell running Windows XP. For all intents and purposes, this thing should have probably up and died ages ago but for whatever reason it seems to have become immortal like that bigoted, chain-smoking grandparent that no one likes. 

 

Recently the machine seems to have developed Alzheimer's and can no longer locally store profiles. Whenever the machine is rebooted it reverts to stock profile settings, and gives an error saying something to the effect of "Could not access local user profile. Could possibly be due to insufficient security settings or a corrupted user profile". After clicking off that, a second error pops up saying "Local user profile not found. Reverting to temporary user profile."

 

I don't even know where to begin troubleshooting something like this. I've attempted to experiment with some basic profile settings like the name and profile picture, but they reset immediately upon reboot. Is this treatable or is the machine finally starting to die?

[amas]

Probably not the best solution but I will just throw it out there. Backup then reformat.