Why would passwords (Outlook, Win Live Mail, Skype etc) be lost upon restart?

[Milhouse Van Houten]

I've noticed that with almost every restart (not all) of Vista SP1 x86 that
certain programs lose their passwords: Outlook 2007, Windows Live Mail,
Skype, AIM, and one or two others (not IE).

Since Protected Storage is read-only[1] in Vista, I take it that all these
programs use the newer Data Protection API[2].

Question: Why does this happen and what can be done about it? It's quite
annoying to have to re-enter all the passwords each time you boot, though as
long as I don't reboot the apps remember them perfectly (this isn't the old
"Outlook doesn't remember my password" problem).

I've seen some advice to delete the contents of this folder (there about 10
small files in it dating back over the last several months), but I'm not
sure it applies in this case.
%userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Protect

[1] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb432403.aspx
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_protection_API

Thanks

 

[Hugh Jeego]

Never had that problem here. I would suggest something got into your machine
or scrambled needed stuff. I would run an SFC /scannow and then if that
doesnt fix it, uninstall Office 2007, reboot and install it again. The only
time I had passwords not working was with Outlook 2002 and Vista. It wont
remember the passwords with that version.

 

[Rufus]

Never had that problem here. I would suggest something got into your
machine or scrambled needed stuff. I would run an SFC /scannow and then if
that doesnt fix it, uninstall Office 2007, reboot and install it again.
The only time I had passwords not working was with Outlook 2002 and Vista.
It wont remember the passwords with that version.

I've noticed that with almost every restart (not all) of Vista SP1 x86
that certain programs lose their passwords: Outlook 2007, Windows Live
Mail, Skype, AIM, and one or two others (not IE).

Since Protected Storage is read-only[1] in Vista, I take it that all
these programs use the newer Data Protection API[2].

Question: Why does this happen and what can be done about it? It's quite
annoying to have to re-enter all the passwords each time you boot, though
as long as I don't reboot the apps remember them perfectly (this isn't
the old "Outlook doesn't remember my password" problem).

I've seen some advice to delete the contents of this folder (there about
10 small files in it dating back over the last several months), but I'm
not sure it applies in this case.
%userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Protect

[1] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb432403.aspx
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_protection_API

Thanks

A similar thing happened to me when I removed the logon password. All the
mail user names and passwords were erased. Had to re-enter all of them.
Avraham