Personal Settings Lost on Shutoff/Startup

[Roger Fink]

I'm setting up a laptop (used ThinkPad w/ new HD and fresh install of W2K by
dealer) using Administrator, and I've also created a back up profile with
full Administrator status. In each case however, certain settings are not
being retained. Major things, such as the A/V program installation and the
copying in of data files don't seem to be a problem, but personal
preferences such as user interface, mouse settings, sound settings, etc.
seem to be lost on shutdown/startup. At this point I'm pretty gun-shy about
making any more changes until I can fix this.

What's happening here?

 

[Roger Fink]

I'm setting up a laptop (used ThinkPad w/ new HD and fresh install of
W2K by dealer) using Administrator, and I've also created a back up
profile with full Administrator status. In each case however, certain
settings are not being retained. Major things, such as the A/V
program installation and the copying in of data files don't seem to
be a problem, but personal preferences such as user interface, mouse
settings, sound settings, etc. seem to be lost on shutdown/startup.
At this point I'm pretty gun-shy about making any more changes until
I can fix this.

What's happening here?

Seems to have gone away. (I don't think I mischaracterized what was
happening, however.)

One personal setting I'm having no luck with at all in either profile is the
IE homepage, which seems to have been commandeered by MSN. I can't set it to
Google - with or without the Google toolbar - and I can't set it to
about:blank. In both of these cases, the home page reverts to MSN upon
reboot. I've tried both "Use Current" and "Default" to get the setting to
hold. Lastly, under Local Computer PolicyUser Configuration/Windows
Settings/Internet Explorer Maintenance/URLs/Important URLs/. I attempted to
customize the homepage in the box provided, but "apply" was greyed out.

Surely there must be a registry hack or administrator setting that the OS
can't override.