Will the real IE please stand up.
 

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.

Sometimes when I close Netscape at work (or it closes itself....) it hangs up and doesn't fully close; I can still see it in the task manager. If I try to open Netscape again without closing it in task manager it goes to the default user stuff.

No idea if that's related.

I don't have the same problem with Firefox. Why haven't I loaded Firefox at work? I'm lazy.

I've been experiencing something strange with IE lately as well. If it sits idle for a little while and then I click to go somewhere, it will tell me that I don't have an internet connection. I have the option to "Try again", which seems to fix the problem, so I obviously do have an internet connection. Still, I'm tired of having to answer this prompt before the connection is made. It just started doing this over the last week.

I've run all of my virus/spyware programs which haven't found anything. Any ideas?

Are you on a wireless connection, or going through a hub or router of any sort?

I think you may have temporarily shifted into a parellel universe - this has happend a couple of times to me lately, so it seems there is some sort of disturbance in the existing time-space continuum. Things should sync up again shortly though your friends might think you a bit loopy.

Going through a router. Cable DSL.

My work computer slipped into some sort of paralell universe today. Called the tech guy, got it fixed, and then when I went to log out, I saw that it was back to the original problem. Grr.

Why? WHY?

Have you tried "tenting" your PC with Tin Foil?

Would that require getting it into a perpendicular universe first?

Do I need the tents to be equilateral triangles? I've heard about the power of the pyramid . . . (and saw it busted on Mythbusters).

Ideally you'd form into the shape of a metalic beret - tres swanky

The computer was already pretty swanky. I'll have to consider giving it a beret.

Just be carefull you don't fashion a Tamo' Shanter - That's how you get Leprechauns

Were I a cruder individual, I'd say something about my computer making me pitch a tent by visiting certain websites. But I'm not, so I won't. Plus, that doesn't quite apply to Matterhorfan.

FREUDIAN SLIP!!!

Sometimes, a user's USER.DAT file gets corrupt (or corrupt for the session). You're suppose to get a pop-up when you login, saying that it's dead, and it's going to load the default one (or a backup). However, sometime it will load both! I've experienced this several times on my Windows Server 2003 box, and the same thing happend to it on Windows 2000 Server. It's rare, but it happens.

Someone's got something on the brain.

Sheesh, I just tried (and failed) to make geometry jokes. ;)