… and practically all user-profile related stuff after (or sometimes even without) updating in Windows Vista.

Firstly, lemme just say that I hate Windows Vista with a passion. Imagine logging in during the morning, ready to start your grueling day at work, and the you see that your desktop looks like it was factory-reset. Ugh. Gone are your files, shortcuts, and other thingamajigs. Gone are your start menu customizations, your internet browser bookmarks, and your mail client settings! Argh! It’s irritating is what it is.

Whatever, now that that’s out of the way, here is one way to recover the disappearing desktop files and other customizations with regards to your user profile:

① Open the Registry Editor. Start ↁERun ↁEtype the command below:

regedit

② Press enter. The Registry Editor window will open.

③ Navigate to the following location in the registry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\

④ There is one registry key for each user profile. To check if a user profile is corrupted, there are three things worth checking:

a) User profile registry keys usually end with a numerical value. If by some chance you find your user profile ending with a “.bad” or “.bak”, for example, it means it’s corrupt. You can rename it (delete the “.bad” or “.bak” part).

b) Click on the user profile registry key in question, check the RefCount value. Set it to 0 (zero).

c) Check the State value. Set it to 0 (zero) as well.

⑤ Either log off the user profile or restart the computer.

I did the above steps and now my settings are all intact again — until the next Windows Vista update, I guess.