Resolved URL shortcuts don't work in one profile

Hi. I have three profiles on my PC: Admin, myself and my wife, these last two limited accounts (i.e., no admin privileges).

My desktop shortcuts for websites work fine, as they also do when logged in as Admin, but on my wife's profile they are dead - no reaction at all. The properties look exactly like the properties in my own profile, but on her profile nix. I also noted that typing a URL (including of course "http:// ") into the "Execute" box on the Start menu also produces no web connection, just the standard message "Resource not found" (or whatever the wording is in the English version).

I've done some research around this site for queries about similar problems, but the only advice I could find needed privileged access as administrator to perform. That's no help, because on the Admin profile there's nothing that needs changing, only on my wife's (limited) profile. Or should I temporarily "promote" her to a privileged account and then remember to limit it again afterwards?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

 

Hi, Pete, and thanks for that. I started working through the instructions in your link, and a funny thing happened to me on my way to the Senate this evening ...

First off, I discovered I have more profiles that I thought: I'd forgotten my son's and the default Guest profile. So now I have 6 profiles: Gandalf (that's my Admin profile); Jef (that's me); Marinella (that's my wife's current profile, the one with the problem I started this thread for); Marina2 (that's the new one I set up following your instructions); Martin (that's our son); Guest (not activated).

Funnily enough, in C:/Documents and Settings/, as far as my wife goes, only "Marina" shows up - neither the old Marinella nor the brand-new Marina2. (That's after logging out, closing and re-booting.) So I couldn't copy-and-paste settings from her old account (Marinella) to her new account (Marina2), because neither is listed under Documents & Settings.

(I think I may have amended her profile name from Marina - her official name - to Marinella - her pet name - at some point in the past for some obscure reason I now forget.)

Fact remains that in C:/Documents and Settings/, only the following profiles are visible (and yes, I've enabled "Show hidden files and folders "): Admin (I assume that's "Gandalf "), Administrator (I assume that's the default profile created by XP); Marina; Martin; and then the default All Users, Default User, Local Service and Network Service. Neither Marinella nor Marina2, so I can't copy and paste from one to the other.

Not only all that: I've now discovered that, even logged on as Gandalf (Admin), I now have the same problem which I didn't have as recently as this morning: clicking my Connections, or a desktop shortcut, or even entering a URL in the Start>Execute box, IE8 does not open. I need to open IE first from the Start menu, then manually type in the URL I want in the Address bar.

Does all/any of that make sense to you?

 

Funnily enough, I was just about to come online and update this thread when your reply got flagged up in my email. Thanks for that, Pete.

To answer your questions: yes to both.

But since then, I've done what I should all along have tried first: System Recovery. (I haven't used it for many years, which is why I didn't think of it before, but fortunately some recent recovery points were set automatically by Registry First Aid, etc.)

That fixed the problem, so I could delete the now superfluous Marina2 profile.

Sorry I took up your time with that - I've now learned to use System Recovery (or whatever it's called in English), and was pleasantly surprised. Have also taken aboard the usefulness of creating recovery points every now and then, just for luck. And I also now know how to copy data from a corrupted profile if it should happen again.

Still curious to know how the bug happened, but only for interest at this point.