I've been using a Windows 2000 machine for several years. But when I booted it up this week, it behaved as if I were starting it for the first time. It asked me to sign in, and then showed a Windows intro tutorial. When I tried to use Internet Explorer or Outlook Express, it asked me to establish an internet account, as if I'd never been on the internet before. And most frightening, My Documents was empty!
I feared a virus, but McAfee Security found no virus. (I maintain a McAfee Firewall, and virus protection, and run a virus scan every week.)
It turned out that all my files were still present. In the Documents and Settings folder on my hard drive, I found two Administrator folders. One, named simply Administrator, has a My Documents folder containing all my old files. The other, named Administrator DFL22D31, is the one the system is now using. (I saved something to My Documents, and it appears in this second Administrator folder.)
How did the second Administrator folder get created, and how can I get Windows to revert to using the settings it has always used before?
Thank you,
ap
