Where'd everything go?

November 29, 2005 10:00 PM

Why have all the contents of one of my Windows XP user accounts vanished?

The account is still there, but the password is gone (or i should say that the password is 'blank' now), all the settings in the account are gone, all the documents are gone, and whenever I click on any program icon, I get the 'introductory page' thingy (you know, Welcome to Media Player! etc). Basically, that one user account is back to the computer's "fresh out of the box" state. WHAT THE ????

Whats going on? Why did this happen, and is this going to happen to the other account (the one that I actually use more often)?

I used my computer a few weeks ago (when it was fine), and then just turned it on for the first time yesterday (when the above problems revealed themselves.) The only thing out of the ordinary that happened in the intervening time is that the computer (a laptop) was put through an airport x-ray machine. Its a new computer (less than 6 months old) and didn't have any previous problems.

posted by Kololo to computers & internet (5 comments total)

Did the affected account recently join/log into a different domain or workgroup?
posted by Danelope at 10:43 PM on November 29, 2005

If you have system restore enabled, you can just revert to an earlier state when this was not the case.
posted by ori at 11:18 PM on November 29, 2005

So before any system restores, try look in the c:\documents and settings\ folders. All profiles are named by the username, and sometimes username.DOMAIN if you've joined a domain. Ori and Danelope are right, if you logged on using a different account with the same name, Windows will have created a new profile, and your old one is still lurking there.

If for some reason your profile was busted or not loadable, Windows also may create a brand new profile using the Default User profile as a template. If this was the case, you'd still see your old profile sitting there, and a second, new, one called something like \Kololo.001\. I don't remember the exact naming convention, but it'd be pretty obvious if it was there in C:\Documents and Settings\.

Look for that, and you'll know your original profile is safe- and then, if you're that lucky, IMMEDIATELY back up your profile folders to a safe place. Don't touch system restore, don't touch ANYTHING until you're sure you've backed up the only copy of your profile to a duplicate location, as a fail-safe if your next steps are "completely fuck up my OS". You don't want your next login or some experiment in 'recovery' to somehow wipe the last remnants of your profile, after all.


Oh, and since you mention this isn't even the user account you most use- then consider this scare a really great, cheap lesson in backing up your stuff!!! If it's important... back it up! Your profile folder is a good candidate to be backed up, among other data folders you absolutely, positively, could not afford to lose.

Windows has a backup program under Accessories -> System Tools, you can set it to do periodic, automatic backups of your key files to a separate drive, or just collect in a special folder that you can back up to removable media in one go. You probably don't need more than weekly backups, but just having a second, week-old copy can be a lifesaver the one time you most need it.
posted by hincandenza at 3:17 AM on November 30, 2005

Danelope, the affected user account was created so i could log into an office workgroup. But I did that many times without it causing a problem.

Hincandenza, I'm going to do all of that! Thanks.
posted by Kololo at 11:39 AM on November 30, 2005

Cool, let me know how it goes. If you find your profile is there, but isn't getting loaded because a new, default one is being used instead, let me know- I can show you how to fix that case as well.
posted by hincandenza at 8:54 PM on November 30, 2005