Ghoulish Delight
07-05-2005, 03:55 PM
And odd thing happened on my computer at work last week. I've resolved it, so no need for any help, just positing for the curiosity of it.
I rarely bother to log off of Windows at my desk. Perhaps not the most secure policy, but I've got nothing on that machine anyway, so whatever. But my point is, on this day, I stayed logged in under my username (gsloan) for the whole day. I had Outlook and and Excel document open after a morning email/board check. I then spent the next couple of hours in the lab. When I got back to my desk, I launched IE from the desktop icon.
That's when things got weird. First, I received the "Setup your server" welcome screen, as if I were logging on for the first time after installing Windows. After getting rid of that, I got the "setup internet connection" wizard, as if it were my first time running IE. And when I finally get into IE, all my settings are reset to default, and my bookmarks are gone. WTF? I was still logged on as myself, Outlook and that Excel document were still open.
I tried launching IE in a few different ways (desktop icon, quicklaunch button, start menu, directly clicking the exe) and got the same results. Finally resigned to this crap, I began to readjust my IE settings and recreate my bookmarks. But then someone sent me an email (opened it in Outlook) with a link in it. I clicked it...and voila, my old IE with all my bookmarks is back!! But only in that window, opening IE any other way other than clicking an email link, gave me the cleared out version.
Leaving the precious window with all my settings in tact open, I compared process names, modification dates, version numbers, etc. between the two. Everything checked out, it was the same program running. FINALLY, I came across some properties page that showed that, for some inexplicable reason, IE (when opened from anywhere but an email link) was suddenly reading its profile info from "Default User". :confused: Bizarre. I have never logged in as Default User, and I confirmed that I was definitely logged in as gsloan. I had launched IE earlier with no problem. But for some reason, it decided I was a different user.
All I had to do to resolve it was log off and log back on. It's been fine since, but I have no idea what caused IE's identity crisis.
I rarely bother to log off of Windows at my desk. Perhaps not the most secure policy, but I've got nothing on that machine anyway, so whatever. But my point is, on this day, I stayed logged in under my username (gsloan) for the whole day. I had Outlook and and Excel document open after a morning email/board check. I then spent the next couple of hours in the lab. When I got back to my desk, I launched IE from the desktop icon.
That's when things got weird. First, I received the "Setup your server" welcome screen, as if I were logging on for the first time after installing Windows. After getting rid of that, I got the "setup internet connection" wizard, as if it were my first time running IE. And when I finally get into IE, all my settings are reset to default, and my bookmarks are gone. WTF? I was still logged on as myself, Outlook and that Excel document were still open.
I tried launching IE in a few different ways (desktop icon, quicklaunch button, start menu, directly clicking the exe) and got the same results. Finally resigned to this crap, I began to readjust my IE settings and recreate my bookmarks. But then someone sent me an email (opened it in Outlook) with a link in it. I clicked it...and voila, my old IE with all my bookmarks is back!! But only in that window, opening IE any other way other than clicking an email link, gave me the cleared out version.
Leaving the precious window with all my settings in tact open, I compared process names, modification dates, version numbers, etc. between the two. Everything checked out, it was the same program running. FINALLY, I came across some properties page that showed that, for some inexplicable reason, IE (when opened from anywhere but an email link) was suddenly reading its profile info from "Default User". :confused: Bizarre. I have never logged in as Default User, and I confirmed that I was definitely logged in as gsloan. I had launched IE earlier with no problem. But for some reason, it decided I was a different user.
All I had to do to resolve it was log off and log back on. It's been fine since, but I have no idea what caused IE's identity crisis.