Lost settings and emails

[cleorex]

I turned on my laptop this morning and it acted as if it was the first time
it was powered on. It was loading settings, the background was changed to
the standard XP background. I didn't get any warnings, no blue screen, and
all was fine yesterday. When it finished (I didn't get an option to cancel
it) I lost all my emails, favorites, personal settings, shortcuts, histories.
All my documents are there (yes!) and programs are fine.

Any ideas? I tried to restore to a prior time but all restore points were
gone. Any way I can find my emails (at least??). I already called Comcast.
No luck there. Please help!

 

[Big_Al]

I turned on my laptop this morning and it acted as if it was the first time
it was powered on. It was loading settings, the background was changed to
the standard XP background. I didn't get any warnings, no blue screen, and
all was fine yesterday. When it finished (I didn't get an option to cancel
it) I lost all my emails, favorites, personal settings, shortcuts, histories.
All my documents are there (yes!) and programs are fine.

Any ideas? I tried to restore to a prior time but all restore points were
gone. Any way I can find my emails (at least??). I already called Comcast.
No luck there. Please help!

Restore for one, does not restore data, only OS.
And what email and what XP version etc are you running.

 

[cleorex]

I'm running Outlook and XP SP3 (I believe). Weirder yet, I restarted the
computer after I posted here and all was fine - my stuff was back, my
settings, etc. Before I posted I tried to switch users but there was only
one user. I'm wondering if another user was created and that is why all my
settings were gone but the programs were there. But why would that happen?
And where did that new user go? There is still only one user now.

I've done a restore in the past and sure it seemed similar but My Docs would
have been gone, the programs not on the restore disk would be gone, printers,
etc. And that wasn't the case this time.

I know that strange things can happen when memory is low or hard disk space
is low - which is my problem - but something like this?

 

[Big_Al]

I'm running Outlook and XP SP3 (I believe). Weirder yet, I restarted the
computer after I posted here and all was fine - my stuff was back, my
settings, etc. Before I posted I tried to switch users but there was only
one user. I'm wondering if another user was created and that is why all my
settings were gone but the programs were there. But why would that happen?
And where did that new user go? There is still only one user now.

I've done a restore in the past and sure it seemed similar but My Docs would
have been gone, the programs not on the restore disk would be gone, printers,
etc. And that wasn't the case this time.

I know that strange things can happen when memory is low or hard disk space
is low - which is my problem - but something like this?

You can tell if there are more users but looking at
C:\documents and settings.
Each user is in this folder. Ignore allusers and default.

It does kinda sound like you changed users somehow but I don't see
enough info to agree with that, but you're working so that's the best
part of this.

 

[Anteaus]

Have a look under "Documents and settings" for a duplicate profile-folder.
You may find your files and settings in here. Chances are the OS has been
unable to load your profile for some reason, and has 'sidestepped' it.

 

[Olórin]

I turned on my laptop this morning and it acted as if it was the first time
it was powered on. It was loading settings, the background was changed to
the standard XP background. I didn't get any warnings, no blue screen,
and
all was fine yesterday. When it finished (I didn't get an option to
cancel
it) I lost all my emails, favorites, personal settings, shortcuts,
histories.
All my documents are there (yes!) and programs are fine.

Any ideas? I tried to restore to a prior time but all restore points were
gone. Any way I can find my emails (at least??). I already called
Comcast.
No luck there. Please help!

I've seen this before, but there were warnings that led me to conclude that
the system had logged on to an account called "TEMP". A chkdsk fixed a
problem with ntuser.dat in the expected profile and all was well.

It's probably worth your trying a chkdisk anyway: Start > Run > type "chkdsk
c: /r" (without the speech marks) and press Enter. It'll probably ask you
about scheduling a check on next restart - reply "Y", save all work, close
all windows and restart your machine. The check should start automatically
as it comes back up - sit back and watch it, or go and do something more
interesting (eg anything), since it can take a fair while (the order of half
an hour or so upwards, depending on partition size).