Microsoft Settings Issue

Earlier today I left my computer on when I went outside to shovel snow. I came back in, and I found that the computer was on the user selection screen, not my own desktop as I had left it on before. When I selected my name on the selection screen, I received a message saying that some of my user properties couldn't be transferred or something to that effect. When I went logged in, I found that my desktop wallpaper had been changed to the standard one that came with the computer.

Many of my icons(but not all) were missing from the desktop. When I went to the start menu, I found that many of the programs listed there were missing, but not all were missing. I went to Program Files, and it seems that no programs are mssing, but I am not sure of this. Firefox also had many of the settings and bookmarks missing.

The message I received from the Microsoft error report was:

"Problem caused by a hard disk drive error - Windows was temporarily unable to read your hard disk drive. This problem is general in nature and we are unable to determine the specific cause of the problem from the error report. In most cases this problem is temporary and can be ignored."

I have had this computer for five years, I have AVG and Windows Firewall installed. What could be causing this? Is there any way for me to revert this?

Thanks a lot for your help.

I would start by running a hard drive test from a bootable CD or floppy. Sounds like it might be a failing HD.

Is there any way I can restore my Windows settings and my Firefox settings?

Check in (X):\Documents and Settings\ (where 'X' is your windows drive) and there should be a list of the users for you machine, if windows recovered you settings there should be a duplicate(s) of you user name except with a different ending, I think it puts .000 on the end, look through and you should find you favorites/desktop shortcuts etc.

Running a chkdsk (check disk) wouldn't harm you either I guess
If you don't know how to do that then:

my computer > right click C > properties > tools > error-checking check now > check both boxes and click ok
It should ask you about performing it on the next boot say yes

What it does is tries to find errors with your hard drive and then should attempt to fix them

Note: It can take a long time to perform

You could try a system restore, hopefully you have a recent restore point.

I ran chkdsk and it came up clean. I do not have system restore turned on. What else should I do?

Try booting your system using the Last Known Good Configuration...

How to start your computer by using the Last Known Good Configuration feature in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;307852

This is a prime example of why you should never disable System Restore (unless you don't care about your data) on the root partition. You may instead want to try performing a repair install of XP...

How to Perform a Windows XP Repair Install
http://michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

You could also try logging into the built-in Administrator account, and try to recover / salvage any of the data from your personal user account... create a new user account from the Control Panel --> User Accounts applet | Logon to that account to initialize the newly created profile, and then log off | Login as Administrator (the built-in Administrator account)... you need to be logged on as an Administrator to the local computer in order to copy user profiles | Open System Properties | 'Advanced' tab --> User Profiles --> 'Settings' button | Select a profile to copy from, and choose 'Copy To' | Type or browse to the profile to copy to C:\Documents and Settings\username