Help With XP Major Problem, Please

Would anyone know why our XP Professional SP2 suddenly lost all data/info from one of our two Administrator User Accounts?

It's not a virus spyware etc & the system is fully current as always on Windws updates. We run IE7/FF2, Zone Alarm Firewall, AVG Anti-Virus & Windows Defender. We also run on demand AVG Anti-Spyware, AdAware Anti-Spyware, Spyware Blaster. Our connection is broadband cable.

Suddenly, an extremely important Admin account with a large amount of important data which was worth a lot to us seems to be gone. It's like "poof - gone forever" - the account was working fine six hours earlier just like it's been for the three years it's been on this system.

Briefly, when entering that user account, everything was gone from the desktop - the wallpaper (it's now just a blue screen), files, programs shortcuts, JPEG collection, etc. Firefox needed to be reinstalled along with all IE settings. And half the programs in the start menu disappeared and for some reason now can't seem to be downloaded and re-installed to that admin user account.

The other two user accounts (one admin, one limited) on the system seem to be ok, except the icons and buttons suddenly seem to appear smaller - I don't know if that's related to the problem described with the "lost account", but that's a snapshot of the problem.

If anyone has some experience with Windows engineering and knows what caused this and how to fix it, I'd greatly appreciate your help.

Many thanks, JD

 

I had a like problem with a Windows 2000 machine at work. Suddenly and with no overt cause one of the several admin accounts lost all of it's data - like the wallpaper, JPEG's, the works. The account could still be accessed, but it was like it was a brand new account.

I was able to correct this by doing a registry restore (via ERUNT) and that took care of the problem. Presto, all was restored. We never did figure out what had caused the glitch, and no other account on the same machine was affected - but it was apparantly something that corrupted the registry.

I know this is anecdotal and may not have anything to do with your problem - but you might look to the registry as a starting point.

Hope you find this of some use.