Hey, I do the computer upkeep/network administration for an adoption agency in town. I just got a call today from the secretary saying that she was in the middle of filling out some form and something happened that caused her to lose all her user settings (icons, start menu stuff, etc.) At first she thought she had lost all her files, but then found them browsing the hard drive. She reset everything, but then at some point she restarted the computer, and when it reloaded windows, it told her all her settings would be lost. She tried it a couple times and each time she restarted her computer, it removed all her settings. Though a virus is always a possibility, its not very likely because she does have an antivirus program which she updated and ran yesterday before leaving work for the day. I told her to try making a new username for herself and resetting all her icons, etc. under that name and see if that works. I haven't heard back from her yet on that one though. Does anyone have any clue why it would have done that? It could have been a combination of key strokes she hit un-intentionally that removed some setting or whatever. Where would I go to renenable user specific settings such as desktop icons, etc.? Thanks for your help!

At this point the user "fiddled" with stuff, so just fix the problem so they can work. Then poke through things to see what went wrong (could just be a corrupted user profile). have them log on with another administrator level account and navigate to C:\Documents and Settings. Then locate the folder for their normal account and rename it (just add "OLD" to the first part of the name). Make sure there are no other matching username folders. Then have them log off, and then back in with their original account. They will have a brand new profile, and can then navigate to C:\Documents and Settings and copy the "Desktop", "Favorites" and "My Documents" folders from the old user profile, to their newly generated one. Make sure they don't just copy all the subfolders over or else they'll just copy the original problem over to their new account as well...

I Have a similar problem, i already tried a new user profile, it just happened again, reinstalled win xp, it just happened again... Windows just resets to default settings. I copied my settings and put them in my default settings map, thinking that if windows changed to default settings again, it would now take the adjusted settings.. It dindn't, it just took factory default settings again.. Going crazy in here.. I'm not only losing win xp settings, but i'm also losing program settings, like all the settings from my firewall, i use Kerio by the way, but before i used Zonealarm and there i also lost my settings... I have an up to dat virusscanner (norton 2004) and i never look into suspicious email, i even look into my mail with mailwasher, while it's still on the server, so i'm positive that it's no virus infection... I have a computer for 15 years now, and i know much about it, also configuring my system with ease, and i build and repair computers for all my friends, i even know a litlle about programming, but this one is going over my head, i suspect it's a XP bug, I tried a registry tracker to see if there are some suspicious actions being taken by the system, but i can't find zip, nada... I'm at the point of becoming a computer vandal...someone...PLEASE HELP !! Musician and Computerfreak