Very perculiar windows accounts problem

[Joe42]

I have a pc which for no apparent reason has reverted both the user accounts on it to default settings.
Its exactly as if someone went and deleted the user accounts and made two new ones under the same names.
However old account settings are still in folders under the account names with all the documents, desktop backgrounds etc, and its created two new folders with the username.pcname as the name on the folders, and its also created a temp folder in there for some reason.

Any details, screenshots, anything that might help you help me solve this, let me know. Its running xp, fairly old machine, very clean copy of windows only recently formatted.

Of course i can copy the stuff from the old user folders and into the new ones and be done, but theres nothing stopping this happening again, as it seems as if it happened by itself.

What on earth is going on?
how can i fix it?

Thanks.

 

[aix0]

Have you changed the computer, workgroup or domain name? Anything like that?

 

[Joe42]

Nope.

Its on a workgroup btw.

 

[bledd]

i've seen this happen on domain machines, when changing domains but having the same username

never anywhere else tbh..

^i'm not saying i don't believe you, just what i've seen

 

[aix0]

i've seen this happen on domain machines, when changing domains but having the same username

never anywhere else tbh..

^i'm not saying i don't believe you, just what i've seen

Yup, same here. Unless the permissions on the old profile folders have somehow been changed. I can't really think of anything else that would cause it to create another profile.

Check that each user has the 'full control' permission for their own profile?

Can't really think of anymore suggestions. *scratching head*

 

[Joe42]

Its really wierd isn't it?

Its possible someone who used it accidentally changed something but i doubt it. As far as i know it did it by itself.

How would i check permissions?

 

[bledd]

right click the folder, sharing + security..