Outlook 2010 Desktop Alerts not working after recreating user profile

Earlier this week I was having a problem with another program that I thought was being caused by something corrupt in my workstation's domain user profile. So using the machine's local admin user, I renamed my domain user profile folder to something else, deleted the registry key for that user profile, then rebooted and logged back on with my domain user name. This created a new user profile folder in C:\Users. Then I went about copying my files over, bookmarks, set up all my e-mail accounts again and imported calendar and contacts from the file in the old user profile, etc.

Well now my Outlook 2010 will not display a desktop alert when new mail arrives, and sometimes won't even make the sound for new mail. I have 3 different IMAP accounts on my Outlook, with my office e-mail being the default account. Desktop alerts have always worked fine on this machine, with Outlook 2010, with this e-mail account, before recreating my user profile. Now suddenly it doesn't want to work at all. The little mail icon shows on the far lower right, but I run dual widescreen displays and I don't always see that icon way over there. I'd rather have the desktop alert pop up near the middle (right of left screen, or left of right screen) where I'm more likely to see it.

I tried turning desktop alerts off and back on in Options. Also tried right-clicking the Outlook icon in the system tray and turning Show New Mail Desktop Alert off and back on. Nothing seems to be working. Any ideas?

Anyone have an idea what might be wrong here? It's really annoying to click back to Outlook (underneath other programs open) and have a bunch of new emails because I didn't notice when they came in.

Okay it seems to be working now that I created a rule. I don't understand why I had to do this, however, as the Desktop Alerts for this IMAP account were working fine before I recreated my profile, and I never set up any rules before then. Weird.