Adminstrator rights, permissions and access

[Guest]

My laptop was virtually unused over christmas. When I booted up to start
work yesterday, many of my programs and files and folders had 'disappeared'
when looking for them in Explorer. As Administrator, I should have, and used
to have, full access to everything, but now I can't follow well used paths
to particular files and programs.

Any ideas?

 

[Guest]

First question would be whether it's the actual programs that have been
delelted from under 'Program Files' - or whether the shortcuts are missing.

If the former, then suspect a serious problem, or malicious action.

If the latter, then there are several possible causes.

The Start Menu hides shortcuts that aren't often used. They are exposed by
pressing a dropdown arrow. This is termed 'Personalised Menus' for some
obscure reason, and is cancellable in the start menu properties.

The desktop has an auto-cleanup feature that does a similar thing to icons,
shifting them into a trash folder after 60 days of non-use.

Finally, if you are logged-on as Administrator, and you were logged-on
differently before, remember that this will 'reprofile' the computer, and you
willl only see those shortcuts which are either in the 'All Users' folder, or
which the Administrator created.

Hope this helps, Ian.

 

[Guest]

First question would be whether it's the actual programs that have been
delelted from under 'Program Files' - or whether the shortcuts are missing.

If the former, then suspect a serious problem, or malicious action.

If the latter, then there are several possible causes.

The Start Menu hides shortcuts that aren't often used. They are exposed by
pressing a dropdown arrow. This is termed 'Personalised Menus' for some
obscure reason, and is cancellable in the start menu properties.

The desktop has an auto-cleanup feature that does a similar thing to icons,
shifting them into a trash folder after 60 days of non-use.

Finally, if you are logged-on as Administrator, and you were logged-on
differently before, remember that this will 'reprofile' the computer, and you
willl only see those shortcuts which are either in the 'All Users' folder, or
which the Administrator created.

Hope this helps, Ian.