Windows reset to factory settings without warning

[Mikeee]

I have an HP Pavilion 5380 that has been working reliably for years. It has
WinXP Home with all of the latest updates installed. We have the computer
password protected to keep the kids off of it. In the last month when it was
powered on it seemed to revert to factory settings for no reason.

The following happened:


User account, "Joanne", and password remained the same. Account is admin level

After log in desktop went from custom photo we put on to stock blue HP
desktop.

Desktop icons are gone and replaced by icons from C:\Documents and
Settings\All Users.

Documents that were left on the desktop (.doc, .xls .pdf) are gone

All applications are still there but iTunes music is gone.

IE favorites are gone and it launches with all of the AOL stuff that was
original to the computer.

After some searching we discovered that all of the lost data is in
C:\Documents and Settings \Joanne. This is where it should be.

"Joanne" is the name of the password protected account. Documents and
Setting has three accounts All Users, Joanne and TEMP.

It looks like even though we log on as Joanne the computer gets its data
from All Users account.



I have not tried to recover anything yet for fear of loosing it all. To make
it interesting it did it again last night. Everything we did since the first
reset was lost and we went to a basic set of desktop icons and the AOL
version of IE. When I booted it up from scratch this afternoon it went back
to the state after the first reset with the data and desktop restored.



This computer has a small hard drive and does not have a D: recovery
partition. It's like the Joanne account somehow is pointing to the All Users
account instead of its' own data.

Any suggestions would be helpful especially in the area of recovering the
data that is not showing up.

 

[neil]

Have you tried Windows XP system restore.? Or at least have a look at the
restore points to see if there are any.

I'm not familiar with the HP but I would think the restore partition is on
the hard drive. There are some times two types of HP system restore,
destructive & non-destructive. I have known someone who said there HP PC did
a HP system restores & they lost all there files. I was able to recover
quite a lot for them but must admit I didn't believe it had happened without
someone setting it off first.

If there are Windows restore points available then I wouldn't have thought
the HP software had restored to defaults.

Just to be clear when you start the PC then the name "joanne" comes up as
the user name and you need to put in your password to log in to the
desktop.? After you have logged in then "joanne" is at the top of the start
menu items.

Neil

 

[Mikeee]

Someone suggested I try UPHClean v1.6d. It did not help. It did show me some
other things however.

I can't put my finger on exactly what is going on. I did a "restart" after I
installed 1.6. I had high hopes because it took the computer a long time to
boot. When it finally finished booting it went to a new state like the one I
described in my original post. All of the icons and docs that were on the
desktop since the first catastrophic reboot were gone. Icons were basic HP
fresh out of the box stuff as before. The other in interesting thing that
happens is I got a balloon in the tool bar asking me if I wanted to take a
tour of XP. This may explain the lengthy boot up process. It's like it is
installing a clean copy of the OS and this was the first launch.

After that happened I powered the machine completely down instead of a reset
from the menu. Now all of my desktop icon and docs were back like before I
installed 1.6d but not back to the original state of the computer.

As I said before, all of the original data is in C:\Documents and
Settings\Joanne. Can you think of a way I can get the Joanne log in to point
back to this folder instead of the All Users folder.

Then I discovered something else. As I said before there are 3 folders in
docs and settings: All Users, Temp, and Joanne. I found that the desktop
icons are a combo of All Users and Temp but nothing from Joanne. All the work
we have been on the machine appears to get stored in the Temp folder. It
created a My Documents folder on the desktop and is putting things in there .

I'm so confused!!!

In answer to you question there are System Restore points that pre date the
problem. I have not used it yet because I want to connect my external HD and
copy C:\Documents and Settings\Joanne and all of the other work we have done
just in case the system restore does not work.

To your second question, yes, the computer boots with Joanne and her custom
user icon on the top of the start menu.

Recovering the docs and iTunes music and pictures can be done after a reset
from my external HD but she had 100's of IE bookmanks and I'm not sure how to
get those back. There are hundreds of little pictures and buttons and icons
in the Joanne folder. From the looks of them they are little pieces of web
pages that were cached by IE. I don't kow what to do with them.

I hope I can find a way without having to reload the system. This machine
dooes not have a recovery partition because at the time we purchased it the
largets HD was 80gb. I have to reload from cd's. We got the machine with the
first release of XP SP2 factory installed. I've don it once before and it
takes all day. you can imagine how many times it has to go to Microsoft and
get sequential updates for 5 years from SP2 to SP3.

Let me know what you think

 

[Mikeee]

Someone suggested I try UPHClean v1.6d. It did not help. It did show me some
other things however.

I can't put my finger on exactly what is going on. I did a "restart" after I
installed 1.6. I had high hopes because it took the computer a long time to
boot. When it finally finished booting it went to a new state like the one I
described in my original post. All of the icons and docs that were on the
desktop since the first catastrophic reboot were gone. Icons were basic HP
fresh out of the box stuff as before. The other in interesting thing that
happens is I got a balloon in the tool bar asking me if I wanted to take a
tour of XP. This may explain the lengthy boot up process. It's like it is
installing a clean copy of the OS and this was the first launch.

After that happened I powered the machine completely down instead of a reset
from the menu. Now all of my desktop icon and docs were back like before I
installed 1.6d but not back to the original state of the computer.

As I said before, all of the original data is in C:\Documents and
Settings\Joanne. Can you think of a way I can get the Joanne log in to point
back to this folder instead of the All Users folder.

Then I discovered something else. As I said before there are 3 folders in
docs and settings: All Users, Temp, and Joanne. I found that the desktop
icons are a combo of All Users and Temp but nothing from Joanne. All the work
we have been on the machine appears to get stored in the Temp folder. It
created a My Documents folder on the desktop and is putting things in there .

I'm so confused!!!

In answer to you question there are System Restore points that pre date the
problem. I have not used it yet because I want to connect my external HD and
copy C:\Documents and Settings\Joanne and all of the other work we have done
just in case the system restore does not work.

To your second question, yes, the computer boots with Joanne and her custom
user icon on the top of the start menu.

Recovering the docs and iTunes music and pictures can be done after a reset
from my external HD but she had 100's of IE bookmanks and I'm not sure how to
get those back. There are hundreds of little pictures and buttons and icons
in the Joanne folder. From the looks of them they are little pieces of web
pages that were cached by IE. I don't kow what to do with them.

I hope I can find a way without having to reload the system. This machine
dooes not have a recovery partition because at the time we purchased it the
largets HD was 80gb. I have to reload from cd's. We got the machine with the
first release of XP SP2 factory installed. I've don it once before and it
takes all day. you can imagine how many times it has to go to Microsoft and
get sequential updates for 5 years from SP2 to SP3.

Let me know what you think

 

[neil]

Hi,
I think to start with to connect the external HD and copy off what you can
is a very good idea, of course some would say you should have those
important files backed up already.

I thought it would be a good idea to look at the restore points to see if
there are any. If there are then HP software hasn't recovered your system
because the recovery would remove previous restore points. (or that's what I
would think anyway)

With regard to the IE favourites then they should also be under the user
"joanne". Usually located in "C:\Documents and Settings\joanne\Favorites".
Copy that folder to the external HD for safety.

Looking at UPHClean I don't think it will help you.

Thinking of things to try, go to control panel and select users. Is there a
user called "joanne".? If not then that would suggest the HP recovery
software has installed a new operating system.

It's very difficult to imagine what might have happened but may be worth
doing a full virus & spyware scan once you have backed up all your files.
If you look at the "windows" folder name is there just one or is there
"windows" and "windows1" (or another number)

Once things are backed up and you have scanned the PC. If there is not a
user "joanne" (and I know you are logged in using that name) then try
creating a new user "joanne" in control panel>users. If that is successful
then you should login using that user name (perhaps call it "joanne1" to
save confusion) Then you can start to copy your files from the external HD
back into the new "my documents". The favourites will go into "C:\Documents
and Settings\joanne1\Favorites".

See what you can find out
Neil

 

[Richard]

Hi "Mikeee", I don't have any specific ideas on what happened or how to fix
it, but the following observations and generic tips may be helpful for this
and other problems. Neil's suggestions seem to be on track, and of course,
copying all "Valued Data" to an external storage device is always a good
idea when things go wrong, or better yet before your computer goes south.

To help avoid malware invasions, it is best to set up and use a non-admin
level user account when on the internet. That limits what a trojan or virus
has access to on your computer.

news[email protected]...

Then I discovered something else. As I said before there are 3 folders in
docs and settings: All Users, Temp, and Joanne. I found that the desktop
icons are a combo of All Users and Temp but nothing from Joanne. All the
work we have been on the machine appears to get stored in the Temp folder.
It created a My Documents folder on the desktop and is putting things in
there .

Strange behavior indeed. On my XP-pro setup, in Documents and Settings,
there is also a 4th hidden folder "Default User". On your menu bar, click
Tools, and Folder Options. Click the View tab of the dialog box, and select
"Show hidden files and folders" in the Advanced Settings area. Also, when
you are using the Search for files and folders, the Advanced Options area of
that dialog has a "Search hidden files and folders" option, which is not
checked by default.

Recovering the docs and iTunes music and pictures can be done after a
reset from my external HD but she had 100's of IE bookmanks and I'm not
sure how to get those back. There are hundreds of little pictures and
buttons and icons in the Joanne folder. From the looks of them they are
little pieces of web pages that were cached by IE. I don't [know] what to
do with them.

Those files should get copied to your external drive when you copy the
Joanne folder. Check the folder on the other drive to verify everything got
copied, with "Show hidden files and folders" active. After you get the user
accounts to behave, you can copy the personal files back, but if you set up
a new user account, you probably don't want to copy things like the hidden
file "NTUsers.dat" into the new account folder. That is a file the Registry
uses, and has various "settings" pertaining to the Joanne account, and there
may be a way to transfer the settings, but I would seek expert help before
replacing a new system data file with an old version.

Here's hoping all your problems are eventually solved.
--Richard