Problems with multiple users on Windows XP Home Edition

Question

I've recently set my wife up as a new user on my 1 year old Dell computer. I set her up as an administrator just like myself but there are a myriad of problems when she selects her account.

The first problem that we noticed was that she attempted to configure the appearance of the Start Menu by selecting the 'Classic' setting. The selection works and the Start Menu changes in appearance to look like prior versions of Windows... HOWEVER... upon logging out or switching users and then going back into her account the setting is lost and the Windows XP default Start Menu is BACK!!! Very frustrating!

We're having similar problems customizing the appearance of file folders on her account as well. Any "View" option that is selected is just ignored by the o/s. For example, checking the "Display the full path in the title bar" option, or un-checking the "Hide file extensions of known file types" option are COMPLETELY IGNORED.

The above configuration problems are bad enough but these are minor compared to additional problems encountered when trying to run Internet Explorer or MSN Explorer. Internet Explorer browser won't work properly and MSN Explorer won't even start!

The other user account on the computer has none of these problems.

I can't find any information on troubleshooting multiple user problems on the MSDN web site so any ideas would be appreciated.

Thanks!

gryjhnhpe · Answer

You could try this from Wifes account Logon;
When Windows exits it normally saves the desktop layout, including icon location, appearance and other parameters. This setting enables/disables any changes from being saved therefore allowing you to preserve a configured layout.

Open your registry and find the key below.

Create a new DWORD value, or modify the existing value called 'NoSaveSettings' set the value to equal '0' to enable saving.

Exit your registry, you may need to restart for the changes to take effect.

User Key: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\
Explorer]
Name: NoSaveSettings
Type: REG_DWORD (DWORD Value)
Value: (0 = disabled, 1 = enabled)

tj1951 · Answer

Gary, Thanks for the idea of adding/changing the NoSaveSettings value in the registry. I tried that but it didn't work.

The solution turned out to be:

1- re-installing Windows XP Home Edition

2- re-applying WIndows XP Service Pack 1

My guess is that at some point I must have deleted the default user files so that was what was causing problems when attempting to create new users. The re-install restored the default user files.

I should point out that both steps above are necessary. I found that after the Windows XP re-install the registry was in a "corrupt" state and one symptom was that all of the dial-up networking connections were not available! Once Service Pack 1 was applied everything went back to normal and the dial-up connections are accessible once again.

Happy Computing!

Windows General

Problems with multiple users on Windows XP Home Edition

Was this post helpful?