Win7 spontaneously started using C:\users\Public as my default profile

[NameChange]

Hey all,

My Windows 7 Home Premium x64 spontaneously started using C:\Users\Public as its default profile and as such all my usual settings have turned to poop. Things were working fairly fine but I was having a couple little errors like when I was trying to change my wallpaper so I thought I would do a restart. When it booted back up most of my normal desktop icons had gone. When I booted up Firefox all my usual addons and the way I have it set up was gone or different.

I was concerned as I thought I had lost all my desktop icons so I opened up C:\Users\MY PROPER USER NAME\Desktop and all my icons were sitting in that folder. I right clicked on one of the icons on my desktop and saw that it said it was residing at C:\Users\Public. Also if I open up "my documents" or "my pictures" etc. all my normal stuff isn't there as it is using C:\Users\Public\Documents etc.

I'm also afraid that it'll be using a LOT of wrong settings for my programs as it doesn't seem to be accessing "MY REAL USERNAME\Appdata" for some things (ie. Firefox).

Does anyone know how Windows 7 deals with what profile to access by default? Is there an easy was of changing that? Registry key or something?

Regards.

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A bit more info on how it might have happened:

I had been using my computer perfectly all morning (and it's been flawless for months). Put it to sleep this arvo which is something I don't do very often at all. Woke it back up a few hours later and everything was totally fine. Went to boot up ME3 for the first time and it gave an error saying I must "update to the latest PhysX" error. I downloaded and installed the latest PhysX. The game booted fine. I exited the game, was getting a strange error when I tried to change my wallpaper, thought I would reboot, and ever since it hasn't bee accessing my profile.

 

[seavixen32]

Have you tried a system restore to a point in time before this problem occurred?

Other than that, your user profile may be corrupted, so you might want to consider creating a new user accoint before deleting your old one.

 

[NameChange]

I did actually try a restore. All it appeared to do was uninstall PhysX. My normal profile appears to be completely in tact and nothing so far has seemed corrupt, it's just I need to access it manually as it appears to have lost the association with Windows as being the default.

 

[seavixen32]

I'm not sure whether it would fix your problem, but you might want to consider a Repair Install.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/3413-repair-install.html