Windows Vista Resets Personal Preferences

[Carolinasky]

2nd try

Every time my computer restarts/reboots Vista loses my preferences like for
having a Classic Start Menu, programs I've marked as safe, etc.

I'm running SP1 with all current updates and am sole user of this machine.

Need help diagnosing and resolving this problem.

 

[Mark L. Ferguson]

You will probably have to create a new user and copy the old settings to it.
I have a link for XP that is basically the same process.

811151 - How to Copy User Data to a New User Profile:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;811151

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[Carolinasky]

That process isn't valid for Vista.
I will attempt to create a new user account and see if that has any effect,
but I doubt it will.

 

[Carolinasky]

Creating a new user account did not resolve the issue.

The new account did not save any preferences, it lost them just like the
original account.

I'm wondering if there is some repair to the registery keys that may solve
my problem, like something is missing that would have signaled Vista to store
and keep my preferences.

 

[zachd [MSFT]]

This should indicate clearly that the computer is shutting down
badly/messily and thus unable to save your preferences on shutdown, as you
correctly guessed towards.

You might want to check what is running when you're shutting down - either
something is shutting down badly or you have a disk/registry corruption.
chkdsk might be good to run at this point.

 

[Carolinasky]

I ran a Chkdsk and checked running programs, but nothing was found to be
wrong.

Any ideas what Keys in the registry may be missing or corrupted which would
cause the problem?

 

[John Barnes]

Check Task Manager just before shutdown. If you have any programs that are
not specific Vista versions, end those tasks manually, make some of your
changes, then shut down normally. On reboot see if the changes have taken.
If so, you can eliminate the programs in blocks or singually until you
isolate the culprit.