Why would changes to a user profile not "stick" - WinXP Home?

[Michael S.]

I help a friend with his computer. A few weeks ago, he started having
erratic behaviours - the desktop background picture disappeared, files were
missing from My_Documents, Outlook 2k3 settings were lost, and that's just
all I've found thus far.

So I brought his computer home with me, connected his hard drive to my
system. Ran virus scans, spyware scans, and searched for deleted files.
Found nothing.

I restarted his computer, made all the shortcuts he'd want, added the quick
launch, told zone alarm to stop nagging about purchasing the full version
and rebooted. It's as if I'd done nothing.

I'm lost. Nothing like this ever happens with my system, which also has XP
Home, Office 2k3.

Are there any clues? I've read the KB article on corrupted user profiles and
since we can continually reboot (though without the recently made changes)
it seems not to apply.

 

[Ronnie Vernon MVP]

I help a friend with his computer. A few weeks ago, he started having
erratic behaviours - the desktop background picture disappeared,
files were missing from My_Documents, Outlook 2k3 settings were lost,
and that's just all I've found thus far.

So I brought his computer home with me, connected his hard drive to my
system. Ran virus scans, spyware scans, and searched for deleted
files. Found nothing.

I restarted his computer, made all the shortcuts he'd want, added the
quick launch, told zone alarm to stop nagging about purchasing the
full version and rebooted. It's as if I'd done nothing.

I'm lost. Nothing like this ever happens with my system, which also
has XP Home, Office 2k3.

Are there any clues? I've read the KB article on corrupted user
profiles and since we can continually reboot (though without the
recently made changes) it seems not to apply.

One quick way to find out. Create another user account with administrator
privileges and log on with it to do some testing. You can always delete this
acount if it does not solve the problem.