Lost Personal settings

[Guest]

Hi,

I have a profile on my windows XP here that suddenly today lost it's
personal settings. No error message has been displayed, and all of the
documents still exist, but the profile does not point to the right locations
anymore.

Is there any way to reverse this with something other than system restore?
(system restore is not working for me).

Thanks,
Macdian

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Hi,

I have a profile on my windows XP here that suddenly today lost it's
personal settings. No error message has been displayed, and all of the
documents still exist, but the profile does not point to the right locations
anymore.

Is there any way to reverse this with something other than system restore?
(system restore is not working for me).

Thanks,
Macdian

Start by looking at things a little more closely:
- What folders exist under c:\Documents and Settings?
- What is your current profile folder? Here is how you
can find out:
Click Start / Run / cmd {OK}
Type this command: echo %UserProfile%

 

[Rock]

Hi,

I have a profile on my windows XP here that suddenly today lost it's
personal settings. No error message has been displayed, and all of the
documents still exist, but the profile does not point to the right
locations
anymore.

Is there any way to reverse this with something other than system restore?
(system restore is not working for me).

Can you be more specific about it "the profile does not point to the right
locations"? What exactly is happening or not happening?

 

[Chuck]

When all else fails before you do something drastic, establishing another
user profile, setting it up, and transferring file or rights to files may be
simpler.
User profiles in Win XP have been known to occasionally go bump in the
night.

 

[Guest]

Hi Pegasus and all,

Sorry for the long response time...anyways, when I do the "echo" as
suggested, the user profile is pointing to C:\Documents and Settings\TEMP,
which is obviously not the folder it should be.

In terms of what still remains on the computer, all profiles' folders still
exist, including the one not working. The effect of this is that the desktop,
email settings, My Documents, etc are all not directly accessible via the
profile, but are accessible through C:.

Thanks for any suggestions!
Macdian

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Rebooting helps quite often to fix this problem.

If the problem occurred recently then you should use
System Restore to return Windows to a point a few
days before the problem became apparent.

Can you create/delete files in the profile folder under
consideration?

 

[Guest]

Hi Pegasus,

The computer has been restarted mutliple times. Also, I am able to create
folders, files, etc in the "corrupt" profile's old folders....however, it
seems that no settings save for the current "temp" profile.

To me, it seems that there must be something somewhere which is telling XP
to get the information from the wrong place...almost like a shortcut which
has been corrupted.

Thanks again in advance,
Ian

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Starting a computer multiple times has nothing to do with
System Restore. Click Start / Help, then look for System
Restore to see how it's done. This is often the easiest way
to fix a problem.