vivid_vibe
OSNN Senior Addict
- Joined
- 7 Dec 2002
- Messages
- 406
Hello all,
I am trying to help my father resolve some troubling problems with his Windows XP Pro desktop computer, hopefully without a reinstall. When he went to log on the other day, almost all of his desktop icons were gone and windows was behaving as if it had just been installed. For instance, the take a tour of Windows thing came up, and even when other programs were run, they too behaved as if they had just been installed. His Outlook Express when opened had to be configured again with e-mail address info and pop and smtp server info. Once you straighten all of this out, if you do a reboot the behavior begins all over again. His favorites under IE are also acting up, and all of his e-mail is apparently gone. The strange thing is, his favorites are in the proper folder, but IE will not display them. There are other problems as well: all desktop customization resets upon a reboot. There are other problems I'm sure I'm forgetting as well.
I have tried running sfc, it solved nothing. I have tried running Norton System Utilities to perhaps repair a corrupt registry, it helped nothing. I am probably about to reinstall Windows unless someone here recognizes all of these symptoms as pointing to a particular problem.
He is running Windows XP Pro SP2 with all updates current as of 10/10/06. Also, is there any way to try to recover his e-mails? Where and in what form are they stored on the harddrive? Any suggestions will be greatly, greatly appreciated (and repped of course).
vivid
I am trying to help my father resolve some troubling problems with his Windows XP Pro desktop computer, hopefully without a reinstall. When he went to log on the other day, almost all of his desktop icons were gone and windows was behaving as if it had just been installed. For instance, the take a tour of Windows thing came up, and even when other programs were run, they too behaved as if they had just been installed. His Outlook Express when opened had to be configured again with e-mail address info and pop and smtp server info. Once you straighten all of this out, if you do a reboot the behavior begins all over again. His favorites under IE are also acting up, and all of his e-mail is apparently gone. The strange thing is, his favorites are in the proper folder, but IE will not display them. There are other problems as well: all desktop customization resets upon a reboot. There are other problems I'm sure I'm forgetting as well.
I have tried running sfc, it solved nothing. I have tried running Norton System Utilities to perhaps repair a corrupt registry, it helped nothing. I am probably about to reinstall Windows unless someone here recognizes all of these symptoms as pointing to a particular problem.
He is running Windows XP Pro SP2 with all updates current as of 10/10/06. Also, is there any way to try to recover his e-mails? Where and in what form are they stored on the harddrive? Any suggestions will be greatly, greatly appreciated (and repped of course).
vivid
