I have no idea what has happen...Im not the smartest when it comes to computers...i logged on my laptop tonight and when i logged on my windows user account none of my settings or documents were there..background is gone and replaced with the HP background...i have no documents and all my folders are gone. my girlfriends user acct is fine. But none of my stuff is there when Im logged on mine. Nothing! Need some help! A lot of important stuff saved on my computer!!
Thanks.
Steve

 

Try to reset it and see what happens.

 

wow... it sounds like your account got restored to defaults.... but that makes no sense since a restore would wipe out your wifes account too...


check in the documents/users folders see if you can find your documents

 

Go to Start > My Computer > Local Disk (Usually C: )

Double Click on on "Documents & Settings"

Folders in there will list all users, your profile may be corrupted and so it created a new profile. When this happens you will find your account in there. For example if your id is "BIRCHZ71" there should be a folder called that.

If that was corrupted, it would create a similar account "BIRCHZ71.computername" (whatever your pc name is)

Look through the folders and see if your files are there. I'm assuming you are running Windows XP

 

not unless wife deleated his account by mistake and put his name and password back.
go under admin on your pc.
look at system restore, if something funny happened it made a restore point.
if not, then try to load up a restore point that is one or 2 weeks old to see what all it can put back.
you may lose a little bit from the past week or 2 but a good chance all the major stuff will pop back up under your account.

 

yup.... if you can run a restore.... it should help ya

 

Do you have the laptop connected to a domain by any chance? If so, you have different user profiles stored for the domain logon vs. the local computer logon.

 

i tried the "system restore"last night but set it for 2 days ago....ill try 2 weeks and see what happens. thanks
steve

 

ok so i found all my stuff this way.....but what do i do now? it automatically logs me on a temporary acct cause there were issues loading my settings.

 

I would create a new account for yourself of course if the restore does not work, which usually it never does. I never really trusted XP's restore feature.

Start > Control Panel > User Accounts > Add/create - Name it something differently and make sure you give yourself Administrator rights.

Log off the computer once you do this and log into an account that is neither your old one or new one. Maybe your wife's. Now follow these steps to transfer your old settings/files to this new account.

# Log on as a user other than the user whose profile you are copying files to or from.
# In Windows Explorer, click Tools, click Folder Options, click the View tab, click Show hidden files and folders, click to clear the Hide protected operating system files check box, and then click OK.
# Locate the C:\Documents and Settings\Old_Username folder, where C is the drive on which Windows XP is installed, and Old_Username is the name of the profile you want to copy user data from.
# Press and hold down the CTRL key while you click each file and subfolder in this folder, except the following files:

* Ntuser.dat
* Ntuser.dat.log
* Ntuser.ini

# On the Edit menu, click Copy.
# Locate the C:\Documents and Settings\New_Username folder, where C is the drive on which Windows XP is installed, and New_Username is the name of the user profile that you created in the "Create a New User Profile" section.
# On the Edit menu, click Paste.
# Log off the computer, and then log on as the new user.


This should get all your stuff back to normal.

After yo do all that and everything is working go back to My Computer Click on Tools Click on Folder Options click on the view tab. Under the Hidden Folders select "do not show hidden files or folders" and also check the "hide protected operating system files (recommended)

so that nothing important gets deleted accidently.