Vista keeps deleting entire user folder

[Rob]

I'm running Vista business (x86) on 2 machines at work. We're running
SBS 2003 (non-R2).
On both machines everything in the main user's folder is occasionally
getting erased. (My) Documents, Pictures, Music, Downloads, Favorites,
Desktop, etc are all gone. It's like Vista deletes the entire user
folder, then re-creates a new one - links to sample pictures and
sample music are the only thing left.

This has happened to me personally on 2 seperate occasions. Being the
Network Admin, I have a dual-boot setup with Vista on the D: drive to
learn it and make sure our network will be ready for normal users.
The first time my profile was deleted I was upset, but wrote it off as
a fluke.

The 2nd time it happened was with our only resident mac user, who's
running Vista Business under Parallels. Luckily it was not a big
problem, since it's only used for access to the company MIS.

Today it happened a 3rd time, again on my machine. I have been using
Vista as my primary OS for over a month, it will take me hours to
reconfigure everything.

I know so far there's not much to run on, obviously Vista is working
fine for others in a SBS environment, I didn't find anyone else with
this problem with a quick google search. I thought after the 2nd time
it might be related to activation, since the first 2 times each
machine was wiped out about the same time as it was activated.
This third time though, my machine was still running the same install
as before, the machine had been activated a long time ago. However,
something else strange did happen last night which may also be related
(or just a red herring).

I was fixing a different client's VPN (the SBS 2003 SP2 RSS problem),
so I used RWW to log into my workstation here to test the VPN to the
client's server. I successfully logged into the RWW webpage using my
login/password, and connected to my Vista machine. When I entered in
my password to log into my machine however, the log in failed. I
tried 3 times to make sure I entered in my password correctly, I'm
positive I typed it in correctly. Unsure of why it wasn't working, I
chose 'switch user', re-typed my user name and password (although
using the "pre-windows 2000" domain name which is slightly shorter),
which was accepted. Everything was normal after that, I still had my
desktop at least. I forgot to log out though (which meant the VPN was
left connected overnight). The next morning I logged back into the
session locally, but explorer had crashed overnight. I tried closing
explorer, and re-running it through task manager, but it seemed as if
explorer crashed again, I still couldn't click on the start button,
and the task manager reported explorer was hung again. At that point,
I decided to reboot. Logging in took an exceptionally long time, and
once in I was greeted with the 'clean install' look because my user
folder was wiped.

I've checked the event logs, nothing important really stands out, my
failed log in attempts from last night didn't seem to be logged. The
shadow copy service did warn about failing to make a restore point.

Does anyone have any tips for me to figure out what's happening?
Eventually I'll have to add other Vista computers in the office,
obviously I won't do that until I'm satisfied this problem is fixed...

 

[Darrell Gorter[MSFT]]

Hello Rob,
Not really my area, but let's see what we can find.
Is the profile really deleted? What user name folders show under \users?
What groups are they members of? ( users, administrators, guests?)

Try turning on debug logging:
221833 How to enable user environment debug logging in retail builds of
Windows
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;221833
And they then let's see what gets logged when a profile is deleted.



Thanks,
Darrell Gorter[MSFT]

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights
--------------------
|> From: Rob <[email protected]>
|> Newsgroups:
microsoft.public.windows.vista.administration_accounts_passwords
|> Subject: Vista keeps deleting entire user folder
|> Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2007 07:46:59 -0700
|> Organization: http://groups.google.com
|> Lines: 60
|> Message-ID: <[email protected]>
|> NNTP-Posting-Host: 216.171.105.2
|> Mime-Version: 1.0
|> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
|> X-Trace: posting.google.com 1182869220 377 127.0.0.1 (26 Jun 2007
14:47:00 GMT)
|> X-Complaints-To: (e-mail address removed)
|> NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2007 14:47:00 +0000 (UTC)
|> User-Agent: G2/1.0
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|> Complaints-To: (e-mail address removed)
|> Injection-Info: m37g2000prh.googlegroups.com; posting-host=216.171.105.2;
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|> Xref: TK2MSFTNGHUB02.phx.gbl
microsoft.public.windows.vista.administration_accounts_passwords:3785
|> X-Tomcat-NG:
microsoft.public.windows.vista.administration_accounts_passwords
|>
|> I'm running Vista business (x86) on 2 machines at work. We're running
|> SBS 2003 (non-R2).
|> On both machines everything in the main user's folder is occasionally
|> getting erased. (My) Documents, Pictures, Music, Downloads, Favorites,
|> Desktop, etc are all gone. It's like Vista deletes the entire user
|> folder, then re-creates a new one - links to sample pictures and
|> sample music are the only thing left.
|>
|> This has happened to me personally on 2 seperate occasions. Being the
|> Network Admin, I have a dual-boot setup with Vista on the D: drive to
|> learn it and make sure our network will be ready for normal users.
|> The first time my profile was deleted I was upset, but wrote it off as
|> a fluke.
|>
|> The 2nd time it happened was with our only resident mac user, who's
|> running Vista Business under Parallels. Luckily it was not a big
|> problem, since it's only used for access to the company MIS.
|>
|> Today it happened a 3rd time, again on my machine. I have been using
|> Vista as my primary OS for over a month, it will take me hours to
|> reconfigure everything.
|>
|> I know so far there's not much to run on, obviously Vista is working
|> fine for others in a SBS environment, I didn't find anyone else with
|> this problem with a quick google search. I thought after the 2nd time
|> it might be related to activation, since the first 2 times each
|> machine was wiped out about the same time as it was activated.
|> This third time though, my machine was still running the same install
|> as before, the machine had been activated a long time ago. However,
|> something else strange did happen last night which may also be related
|> (or just a red herring).
|>
|> I was fixing a different client's VPN (the SBS 2003 SP2 RSS problem),
|> so I used RWW to log into my workstation here to test the VPN to the
|> client's server. I successfully logged into the RWW webpage using my
|> login/password, and connected to my Vista machine. When I entered in
|> my password to log into my machine however, the log in failed. I
|> tried 3 times to make sure I entered in my password correctly, I'm
|> positive I typed it in correctly. Unsure of why it wasn't working, I
|> chose 'switch user', re-typed my user name and password (although
|> using the "pre-windows 2000" domain name which is slightly shorter),
|> which was accepted. Everything was normal after that, I still had my
|> desktop at least. I forgot to log out though (which meant the VPN was
|> left connected overnight). The next morning I logged back into the
|> session locally, but explorer had crashed overnight. I tried closing
|> explorer, and re-running it through task manager, but it seemed as if
|> explorer crashed again, I still couldn't click on the start button,
|> and the task manager reported explorer was hung again. At that point,
|> I decided to reboot. Logging in took an exceptionally long time, and
|> once in I was greeted with the 'clean install' look because my user
|> folder was wiped.
|>
|> I've checked the event logs, nothing important really stands out, my
|> failed log in attempts from last night didn't seem to be logged. The
|> shadow copy service did warn about failing to make a restore point.
|>
|> Does anyone have any tips for me to figure out what's happening?
|> Eventually I'll have to add other Vista computers in the office,
|> obviously I won't do that until I'm satisfied this problem is fixed...
|>
|>

 

[Rob]

Hi Darrell,

Thanks for your help. There are only 2 users on my system, the local
account created during the vista install, and my domain account. I've
checked the corresponding folders, and also the public, administrator
and the hidden Default folder, but nothing is there. There are no
other folders in the \users folder. The accounts are administrators.

I will enable debug logging on both Vista machines.

Thanks,

Rob

 

[Rob]

Hi Darrell,

Thanks for your help. There are only 2 users on my system, the local
account created during the vista install, and my domain account. I've
checked the corresponding folders, and also the public, administrator
and the hidden Defaultfolder, but nothing is there. There are no
other folders in the \usersfolder. The accounts are administrators.

I will enable debug logging on both Vista machines.

Thanks,

Rob

Hello Rob,
Not really my area, but let's see what we can find.
Is the profile really deleted? Whatusername folders show under \users?
What groups are they members of? ( users, administrators, guests?)

Try turning on debug logging:
221833 How to enableuserenvironment debug logging in retail builds of
Windowshttp://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;221833
And they then let's see what gets logged when a profile is deleted.

Thanks,
Darrell Gorter[MSFT]- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Quick update: This problem happened on the Mac computer again, the
second time the user logged in after it happened to me. I had already
set the debug logging registry key, but apparantly vista doesn't
support it - neither machine has a log file, but both machines have
the key set correctly.