New user = new software setup?

I have WinXPHome. I had the glitch reported elsewhere here by others of certain files and folders suddenly becoming inaccessible ( "Acess denied ") -- booting into safe mode to get access to "The Security Tab" to "Take Ownership" did NOT work -- after 3 hours on the phone with MS tech support, they suggested creating a new user (I only had one), make the new user an administrator, log off and log back on as that new user, then delete the previous user. This worked! All files and folders accessible! But!

BUT!!!

All of my WinXP settings (desktop, menus, etc) are gone. ALSO, all of my OfficeXP settings are gone, as well as IE6 settings, including all of my Favorites! I have to reconfigure Outlook, which is a major pain (I do still have my pst file). ALSO, while my other software is still installed, every program now regards me as unregistered, requiring registration codes etc. to be put in again.

So, I have 2 questions:

(1) Is there any way I could have avoided, or can now fix, this? For example, are my IE6 Favorites in a file somewhere on the C drive, somehow retrievable? Can I somehow run Outlook in a way that looks at my previous settings? Or are they gone forever?

(2) Is there any way to get WinXP to function as a 1-user-only machine (to avoid, for example, the apparent schizoid dementia that started this, in which certain files or folders become inaccessible to the only user of the computer)?!? I hate it when the inclusion of new complicated options renders my simple needs more difficult or even impossible....

Thanks!

 

If, when you deleted the user account, you told it to keep all that account's "stuff," it should all still be there. Look in the main drive's Documents and Settings>User Name and see if the deleted account is still there.

If it's all still there, he Favorites folder will be, too, and can either be imported into IE or you can just copy that folder into the new account and let it overwrite the Favorites folder that's already there.

If you did not, however, tell it to keep the deleted account's stuff, and the deleted account's user name isn't in Documents and Settings, I think you're out of luck.

You could try using the File and Settings Transfer wizard if the old account's stuff is still on the drive. That wizard is supposed to be for transferring files and settings from one computer to another, but it has a browse button and did let me browse the user account folders on the harddrive. If it will let you transfer files and settings from one user account to another, keep in mind it might also transfer whatever caused the problem in the first place.

 

Woohoo! Thank you!

This worked, to retrieve a number of things, such as my Favorites -- haven't figured out yet whether it'll work for Outlook.

Of course, MS is still MS and so Windows is still Windoze -- it asks if you want to keep stuff associated with the user you're deleting, and even ask's you where you'd like it put, and it puts it there and then removes that User -- but it also leaves all sorts of detritus from that user behind, scattered about the harddrive and the registry -- once I discovered this it was useful, to retrieve some things that hadn't been saved with the other stuff....