Originally Posted by SC6PT0

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.