Desktop/settings reset on update

[srsizzy]

Hey, so I have an odd configuration -- I have one hard drive for Windows/Software (C: ), and one for all files and stuff (A: ).

Under my USER file, I replaced the locations of all the main folders (Desktop, My Pictures, My Documents, etc) to A:\Users\ME\etc instead of being on C:\Users\ME\etc. This is something Windows 7 supports really obviously by letting you right-click on "My Documents," then go to "Location," and change it to another location.

However, upon auto-restarting from an update while I was asleep, it decided to "Prepare Desktop..." and then when it was fully booted, my entire user account was blank. There was a default theme, no shortcuts on desktop or start bar, all program history wiped from Start menu.

I restored the locations of everything in my User folder, but there are still problems. I can't drag files between folders -- I can CTRL+C then CTRL+V, but I can't actually just drag them. One of the programs in my task bar (Norton) won't open when I click it, only when I navigate through the start menu.

Also, after restarting once, the desktop loaded as completely black, with no images, and going to Personilize, I cannot choose ANY windows themes. It says "This theme cannot be applied to the desktop. Try clicking another theme." I can't get it to display any desktop images.

Lastly, I cannot change the default desktop items (My Computer, Network, Recycle Bin). No matter what I do, all of the icons are there and cannot be turned off.

Under "Previous Versions" on my C: drive, it will let me explore previous versions of the past two days, but it won't let me restore them entirely. I'd like to do this, given my whole computer is freaking out for unknown reasons. I'm doing a virus and spyware scan, but I don't think that's what went wrong. I don't want to reinstall right now, so I hope there's another solution.

 

[srsizzy]

I sort of made my computer usable, don't think the problem is fixed though.

Like I said, every single time I restart into the main user account ("Everin"), it says "Preparing Desktop," and messes everything up in all manner of ways (it got to a point where I couldn't even install new programs for some reason...).

Creating a new user account seems to have stopped all of these issues in using Windows in general. However, the old user account that is broken is ALSO the default Admin account (that I somehow renamed).

Under C:\Users\, I have "Administrator" and "Everin."

When I access and modify "Everin," it acts as if it is the ORIGINAL Admin account (it cannot be deleted in the user account panel), but under the user accounts panel, there is ONLY "Everin" and "Guest."

The "Administrator" folder under C:\Users\ is connected to NO profile, yet cannot be deleted either (has a padlock on it, can't be deleted).

I don't know what that's all about. I'm gonna try to just live with this new user account and ignore the old account, but I can't delete it, and there's obviously something deeply wrong with it that I don't know how to fix.

[EDIT] I tried to delete the old admin account, but the computer says built-in accounts cannot be deleted.

After restarting, the original account is still completely ruined -- hardly functions, doesn't load desktop/theme, didn't load transparency, can't install files, etc. It also constantly links itself to C:\Users\TEMP because it is broken.

The new account works fine, but I want to find a way to fix the other account. It cannot be deleted, so I can either just ignore it or find a way to fix it.