Lost settings

[SAM]

My laptop was turned off. When I booted the system, most
but not all of my shortcuts were gone, my desktop
settings were changed, and the task bar was different.
My Outlook Express was gone along with all of my emails.
Office was still there but back to first time use status.
WHAT HAPPENED?? If I do a 'system restore' will I loose
the programs I have installed that did not come with the
Laptop?

[Cindy Winegarden]

Hi Sam,

I can't say for sure but it sounds like you have logged in as a different
user, although I don't know how you would do that without knowing it.

--
Cindy Winegarden MCSD, Microsoft Visual FoxPro MVP
, www.cindywinegarden.com

"SAM" > wrote in message
...
> My laptop was turned off. When I booted the system, most
> but not all of my shortcuts were gone, my desktop
> settings were changed, and the task bar was different.
> My Outlook Express was gone along with all of my emails.
> Office was still there but back to first time use status.
> WHAT HAPPENED?? If I do a 'system restore' will I loose
> the programs I have installed that did not come with the
> Laptop?

[Kelly]

Hi Sam,

See if this helps:

Logon to another account with admin privilege and run System Restore.
Choose the most recent restore point and SR should restore the user
hives.

Or...

Boot into safe mode and log in as Administrator. Copy ntuser.dat from
%windir%\repair to "Documents and Settings\[your user id]". Now do a system
restore to a point in time prior to when the corruption message began to
appear.

Or...

Relocate NTUserdat

Look in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows
NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList and find the profile you want to change and
then change ProfileImagePath to the ntuser.dat folder that you want to use.
You must manually copy or move the ntuser.dat file there.

Corrupt Hive
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_sys32.htm

How to Recover from a Corrupted Registry
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q307545

--
All the Best,
Kelly

MS-MVP Win98/XP
[AE-Windows® XP]

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"SAM" > wrote in message
...
> My laptop was turned off. When I booted the system, most
> but not all of my shortcuts were gone, my desktop
> settings were changed, and the task bar was different.
> My Outlook Express was gone along with all of my emails.
> Office was still there but back to first time use status.
> WHAT HAPPENED?? If I do a 'system restore' will I loose
> the programs I have installed that did not come with the
> Laptop?