boydn1 said:
My brother has 3 users setup with fast user switching on Xp Pro. Recently
user2's desktop dissappeared and she couldn't get to "My Documents" or any
of
the other profile folders. When I looked "user2" and all related files
were
still in Documents and settings. She was logging in as
user2-computername. I deleted both user2 accounts and re-created user2
then copied all of her
files back. Two days later the problem is back.
Any ideas what could cause this and how to prevent it?
Thanks
Profile corruption like that is commonly caused by 1) software; or 2)
hardware. For the first thing, do the normal scanning for malware.
http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Removing_Malware
Also make sure your brother is shutting down correctly from his profile;
i.e., closing all programs and then doing Start>Shutdown and waiting for
the system to turn off. I don't say this to hurt your brother's feelings
but for all I know his computer is infected (or has other issues) and isn't
shutting down properly so he's doing a hard shutdown every time, causing
corruption.
For the second thing, testing the hard drive is a good next step. Test the
hard drive with a diagnostic utility downloaded from the drive mftr.'s
website. You will create a bootable CD with the file you download. You will
need third-party burning software to do this such as Roxio, Nero, or the
free CDBurnerXP Pro. Burn as an image, not as data.
http://www.cdburnerxp.se/
Boot with the CD you made and do a thorough test of the drive. If it fails
any physical tests, replace it.
If you need more help, please post back with the results of your
troubleshooting and include some information about your brother's computer.
Please include the answer to The First Question Of Troubleshooting: If the
problem is new, what changed between the time things worked and the time
they didn't?
Malke
