Microsoft Update Screwed up User Profile

[Nick]

I'm baffled as to what my uncle did to screw up his computer. He's
running microsoft XP home edition. According to him, "Microsoft
updated their system and now everything is gone."

I have no idea what he meant by microsoft updating their system, so i
went over to take a look. Somehow, all his desktop items, favorites,
"my document" files, and many other things were just gone. It was
like someone wiped out his profile and started fresh.

There has always been just one user account (Joe) on this PC (which is
named JOEPC), and the PC was set up to log in automatically to this
account. A careful look at the Documents and Settings folder shows
something odd. There are two folders, one called Joe (which I took a
look at and there was all his missing files) and another called
Joe.JOEPC. Joe.JOEPC is some new profile that the computer is
logging into. I'm not sure how this came about. I'd like to remove
this profile, and start using the Joe profile again.

I took a look at the control panel, and went to user accounts. Under
user accounts it only had two users, Joe and Guest. But this Joe
account is associated with this new Joe.PC folder.

Thoughts? Hope that made sense. I'm debating on creating a new
account, deleting the Joe.JOEPC folder, and then renaming the Joe
folder to Joe.JOEPC.

thanks in advance.

 

[Nick]

PS, I have at least copied over his favorites and My Documents folder
for now. So all of that junk is back. But he has a ton of programs
on there that need to be reconfigured. Outlook is one example, all of
his old messages and contacts have disappeared. I'm sure they're
located in his old profile somewhere.

 

[John Wunderlich]

PS, I have at least copied over his favorites and My Documents
folder for now. So all of that junk is back. But he has a ton of
programs on there that need to be reconfigured. Outlook is one
example, all of his old messages and contacts have disappeared.
I'm sure they're located in his old profile somewhere.

"How to recover the damaged user profile in Windows XP"
<http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555473/en-us>

HTH,
John