Strange Happenings with WinXP

Ok I have an issue with one of our computers here in my office. Its a secretaries computer with microsoft office 2007 and winXP SP3 installed.

About 2 weeks ago she booted her computer up that she has had for over 2 years now. Windows welcome screen comes up and immediately tells her she has to activate her copy of XP, as if this was the first time she has used the computer. I couldnt boot into safe mode and I couldnt activate it as you normally would. I had to call the help line number where a customer service rep had to give me a new product number to use. Once that was done the computer booted up fine. However all her documents from 2009 till present were gone. Office 2007 was reverted back to office 2000. Basically it looked like the computer restored to a point 2 years ago.

I am still frantically looking for answers as to what might have gone wrong but havent found anything. Then just yesterday she booted her computer up and all of her files and system configuration was reverted back again to the way she had it from 2 weeks ago. Updated programs and documents from 2009 to present were there!! This morning she boots up and its back to the reverted 2009 system configuration missing those documents again, but the programs like office etc are still current.

Anybody have any ideas what is making windows do this?? Obviously the files we thought were gone from reverting back to 2009 are still there as we saw yesterday. I just cannot find them.

Any help is appreciated. I didnt know if this should be put in the malware thread or here as I am not sure if its a virus or not.

Thanks.

 

I'm thinking there is different partitions. Both with Windows Xp loaded on it.

When you go to My computer do you see multiple drives?

 

Or in Disk Management are there multiple drives there?

 

Yep, Im an idiot. I forgot that this machine had the old C Drive in it from her other computer. Its listed as the slave drive for getting old documents off of it. The master drive failed to boot and the slave apparently took priority. 2 days ago the master drive must of decided it was going to work and thats why she saw her missing files again.

Great!! Not sure if I am as happy about the answer as I thought I was going to be.


Thanks for your help.

 

In the bios you can completely remove it from the boot list.

Glad we got it figured out.

 

That may mean the master drive is developing problems. Time to think about imaging that drive in case it needs to be replaced.

 

Great suggestion.