- Joined
- Sep 24, 2001
- Location
- Currently Nowhere
I have a client that has a business computer in a public place and wanted a modicum of security in the off chance anyone would wander into her office and start messing around. Her computer was previously set up with the default administrator account which would boot with no password. She asked me to create an account with a password so when windows boots and when she steps away for 10 min, a password would be required.
So, I went to user accounts and created a new account with her name as an admin account and let her set a password (and change her icon) and she was good to go. She was using it for a day and was getting a password prompt as expected when she stepped away and everything was fine.
Today I was called in to install a new check scanner. Before I did anything, I rebooted the computer with all the peripherals unplugged so I would be starting fresh. However, the computer booted directly to clear desktop (only icons were those installed under "All Users"--her personal shortcuts were all missing). I rechecked user accounts and found the one I had created was completely gone. All the favorites were gone. The only users were the admin and the guest (disabled) accounts. There was no other user folder in the documents and settings folder.
This is an older computer and I know that its CMOS battery is close to dead, but the time and date came up correctly after the reboot (it sometimes loses BIOS memory when turned off over a weekend--I told her to leave it on until I could grab a battery).
I try to open the documents and settings\Administrator folder, but access is denied. I tried to restore to a restore point made on the day before I created the new account, but the restore failed. When I say failed, I mean that Windows said that a restore wasn't possible even though I ran the restore at a checkpoint that appeared to be valid on the calendar. It rebooted and 'tried' to load up the old data, but received the error message after a few minutes. I tried to restore to 2 days previous and that failed as well.
It's almost as if my reboot restored the computer to a point just after the O/S was initially installed.
Any ideas would be appreciated. TIA
So, I went to user accounts and created a new account with her name as an admin account and let her set a password (and change her icon) and she was good to go. She was using it for a day and was getting a password prompt as expected when she stepped away and everything was fine.
Today I was called in to install a new check scanner. Before I did anything, I rebooted the computer with all the peripherals unplugged so I would be starting fresh. However, the computer booted directly to clear desktop (only icons were those installed under "All Users"--her personal shortcuts were all missing). I rechecked user accounts and found the one I had created was completely gone. All the favorites were gone. The only users were the admin and the guest (disabled) accounts. There was no other user folder in the documents and settings folder.
This is an older computer and I know that its CMOS battery is close to dead, but the time and date came up correctly after the reboot (it sometimes loses BIOS memory when turned off over a weekend--I told her to leave it on until I could grab a battery).
I try to open the documents and settings\Administrator folder, but access is denied. I tried to restore to a restore point made on the day before I created the new account, but the restore failed. When I say failed, I mean that Windows said that a restore wasn't possible even though I ran the restore at a checkpoint that appeared to be valid on the calendar. It rebooted and 'tried' to load up the old data, but received the error message after a few minutes. I tried to restore to 2 days previous and that failed as well.
It's almost as if my reboot restored the computer to a point just after the O/S was initially installed.
Any ideas would be appreciated. TIA
