Mysterious change to laptop, now it's glitchy.

My boss borrowed my laptop to connect me to the network. When he came back, he told me he had made me an admin in the network and made my laptop think it's a desktop. He also gave me several adobe programs.

I lost all my settings. My files are still there, but all of my programs act as if they are being opened for the first time. Chrome and flash player were gone entirely. Some programs won't open at all. I have even gotten my first blue screen of death. It takes several minutes to turn on when it used to take under a minute to be fully on and usable. And I can't even connect to the network at work.

My laptop used to be pristine. I kept it brand new with very little software added so that it would run incredibly quickly. I can't believe how slow and glitchy it is now.

Is there a way to get my laptop with all my settings back without losing the new software? I may be able to download the software again from Creative Cloud. If so, I don't even mind losing it and downloading it again.

Also, what is this even called? I'm referring to it as some mysterious action, but there must be a name.

 

In the absence of a full disk image your only other option is to perform a System Restore to a date prior to your boss messing with it, though that would disable any software changes he has made and may, or may not restore the functionality you have lost. As it's your boss we're talking about it would be better to sit down with him and show him what problems you now have before taking any action at all.

If you then want to do a system restore then type those two words accurately into the Start > Search box or, if it's Win 8, into the Start screen and pick the restore point you want. System Restore is much misunderstood - it does not take the system back entirely to how it was previously and it does not touch any of your personal files.

 

I don't mind doing the system restore. That is different than I had thought. Something I didn't mention earlier because I wasn't sure of its relevance is that he created a new user on my laptop. The new one is the admin. Neither users have my old settings at all. Will the system restore change it back to one user also?

My boss has offered to change it back, but I feel uneasy about it. I want to try and fix it myself.

 

Good question! I rather think it will, as I can't see how it could do its job otherwise, but I can't be sure as I've never been in your situation of finding there is a new user account I don't want.

Something you could try before going for system restore would be to elevate your old account to an Admin account, log on to it and delete the Admin account your boss created, and then see how things are. That option wouldn't affect your ability still to use system restore if you want to. You need to be logged in the the new Admin account in order to elevate the other account.

 

Hey! I forgot to tell you ! I used a system restore, but there wasn't a point far enough back as he had installed so many things that day. I finally gave in and let a friend to look at it. After over an hour, my laptop was back to normal! The amount of different settings, etc, that he changed was impressive.

Thank you for your help! Just wanted to let you know everything is fixed.