My machine restored back to April of 2003! What happened?

[Guest]

I get up this morning and turn on my computer. After booting, I notice about
half the desktop icons are missing. When I take a closer look, I notice
software that was removed has been reinstalled. I also notice that many
programs that had been installed in the past several months are gone.
Everything was working fine last night. The only thing that has change
recently is; I dropped Bellsouth DSL and had Time Warner RoadRunner High
Speed Cable installed. This was installed last Saturday. I added a new email
account for RoadRunner in Outlook and it's even gone. If I look in my cookies
directory, all the files are dated 4/2003 except the ones I've created
tonight. When I use the file explorer to browse the directories, it appears
that many of my programs have been removed but some are untouched. For
example: I had a licensed version of Ad-aware SE and WS_FTP Pro and both of
those are missing. I was developing a Microsoft Access VBA program and notice
that all the code now is dated back to 2003 (glad I have that backed up). On
the other hand, it is still running Microsoft Digital Image Pro 7.0 and it
looks like it's running the latest version of Microsoft Office and still has
all my XP Developer software installed.

I'm running a wireless router so I have a firewall and I also have
encryption enabled on the router. I tried to do a system restore but it will
only let me restore to today’s date. No other dates are available. I also
tried running the restore from a dos prompt in safe mode... still no other
dates available. I'm unable to run Norton Antivirus because it now tells me
my subscription has expired. It is also running Norton Antivirus 2003 when
before it was running Norton Antivirus 2005. When I start Norton Antivirus it
shows the last virus definition files are dated 4/9/2003.

I'm running a P4PE Motherboard with a 3.06 GHz processor & 1 Gig of DDR
Memory. Hyperthreading is turned on and I'm also running a Raid 0 Array using
two 80 Gig drives.

Any ideas about what happened or how I should proceed? I found instructions
on the Microsoft support site on rebuilding the entire registry… would that
help? I guess I should download the latest virus defs and run Norton from the
dos prompt.

Sure wish there was a simple way out…

 

[Rock]

I get up this morning and turn on my computer. After booting, I notice about
half the desktop icons are missing. When I take a closer look, I notice
software that was removed has been reinstalled. I also notice that many
programs that had been installed in the past several months are gone.
Everything was working fine last night. The only thing that has change
recently is; I dropped Bellsouth DSL and had Time Warner RoadRunner High
Speed Cable installed. This was installed last Saturday. I added a new email
account for RoadRunner in Outlook and it's even gone. If I look in my cookies
directory, all the files are dated 4/2003 except the ones I've created
tonight. When I use the file explorer to browse the directories, it appears
that many of my programs have been removed but some are untouched. For
example: I had a licensed version of Ad-aware SE and WS_FTP Pro and both of
those are missing. I was developing a Microsoft Access VBA program and notice
that all the code now is dated back to 2003 (glad I have that backed up). On
the other hand, it is still running Microsoft Digital Image Pro 7.0 and it
looks like it's running the latest version of Microsoft Office and still has
all my XP Developer software installed.

I'm running a wireless router so I have a firewall and I also have
encryption enabled on the router. I tried to do a system restore but it will
only let me restore to today’s date. No other dates are available. I also
tried running the restore from a dos prompt in safe mode... still no other
dates available. I'm unable to run Norton Antivirus because it now tells me
my subscription has expired. It is also running Norton Antivirus 2003 when
before it was running Norton Antivirus 2005. When I start Norton Antivirus it
shows the last virus definition files are dated 4/9/2003.

I'm running a P4PE Motherboard with a 3.06 GHz processor & 1 Gig of DDR
Memory. Hyperthreading is turned on and I'm also running a Raid 0 Array using
two 80 Gig drives.

Any ideas about what happened or how I should proceed? I found instructions
on the Microsoft support site on rebuilding the entire registry… would that
help? I guess I should download the latest virus defs and run Norton from the
dos prompt.

Sure wish there was a simple way out…

That is very strange. I don't have any simple solution for you. Next
time keep an image of the hard drives on an external USB drive or clone
the drives. There are a several programs that can do this effectively
including Norton Ghost, Acronis True Image, and Terabyte Unlimited's
Image for Windows and BootItNg.

 

[bxf]

I can't imagine how this could occur without you being aware of it, but
one way I can see something like this happening is if SYSTEM RESTORE
was somehow invoked. That assumes that you had a pretty old restore
point sitting around.

Whether or not that is what happened, you may want to check which
RESTORE POINTS are available on your system in its present state.
Perhaps you will find something useable. Logically, it would make no
sense to have a restore point more recent than your present
configuration. But if things are screwed up, it may be worth a look.

Another possibility: when you boot and hit PF8 (is this the right key?)
to give you the Troubleshooting menu, etc, if you have the option to
"Go back to last working configuration", perhaps that could help.

 

[bxf]

I can't imagine how this could occur without you being aware of it, but
one way I can see something like this happening is if SYSTEM RESTORE
was somehow invoked. That assumes that you had a pretty old restore
point sitting around.

Whether or not that is what happened, you may want to check which
RESTORE POINTS are available on your system in its present state.
Perhaps you will find something useable. Logically, it would make no
sense to have a restore point more recent than your present
configuration. But if things are screwed up, it may be worth a look.

Another possibility: when you boot and hit PF8 (is this the right key?)
to give you the Troubleshooting menu, etc, if you have the option to
"Go back to last working configuration", perhaps that could help.

 

[MAP]

I can't imagine how this could occur without you being aware of it,
but one way I can see something like this happening is if SYSTEM
RESTORE was somehow invoked. That assumes that you had a pretty old
restore point sitting around.

Whether or not that is what happened, you may want to check which
RESTORE POINTS are available on your system in its present state.
Perhaps you will find something useable. Logically, it would make no
sense to have a restore point more recent than your present
configuration. But if things are screwed up, it may be worth a look.

Another possibility: when you boot and hit PF8 (is this the right
key?) to give you the Troubleshooting menu, etc, if you have the
option to "Go back to last working configuration", perhaps that could
help.

Go back to last working configuration

This option will take your system back to the last time it was booted,only.
That's why it hardly ever works for people,someone tries to bootup it
doesn't work so they try this option still doesn't work "hence the last
time"

System restore, 90 days Max.And I doubt it will work that far back without
at least 1 point being corrupted along the way.

 

[Harry Ohrn]

This is highly unusual. When System Restore is run, and you revert back to a
previous restore point, you will have an option to Undo the roll back. If
someone gained access to your system and ran System Restore you should be
able to run SR again and select Undo. However if someone ran System Restore
and then after the roll back and the system rebooted, they could have turned
off System Restore to purge all restore points and then turn it back on
again.

Perhaps your system security has been compromised? Got a malicious person in
the home or someone who likes to experiment a lot????