First Big Stumble with the D410

Well it had to happen eventually and it did. My wife liked the look of the D410 and wanted to use it to plan some upcoming travel. No big deal, I don't mind sharing but I didn't really want her messing up any of my files or settings or have to wade through her bookmarks so I figured I would just set her up a profile to use on this notebook.

So I wander into User Accounts and click on the appropriate link. First thing I have to do is set up the administrator account. No problem, that will be Monty. I figured since I had been working under an administrator account all this time, it would assume the identity of the first user I created. How could I be so foolish, let's blame the late hour.

I log out, and the only option is to log into "Monty". Where did the administrator account go I've been using all this time? So I go into "Monty" and yep, you guessed it, every setting is gone! My files saved to desktop, shotcuts, wireless settings, bookmarks and saved passwords....all gone. Deep breath, ok, there has to be a way to move everything, but what the heck happened to "Administrator"? Well to get myself to bed before it gets too late tonight, after several user creations and deletions I figured out how to go into the System->Advanced tab and copy a user profile. Wasn't too difficult and most everything was recovered. The only casuality along the way was the Intel Wireless Controller. Nothing I tried would all it to save my security settings so I could log into my network. Kept throwing up these strange database errors. Finally I gave up and said "Let Windows manage the wireless adapter". After that I was able to get on the network and everything else seems to be working as it was (even remembered my PgUp remap).

Guess the lesson learned is I should have set up the adminstrator and user accounts first thing before I started "customizing" my XP install. Either that or tell my wife to keep her grubby paws off the D410. On the up side, I tried 3 different Linux distros out briefly this afternoon and two of them appeared to work perfectly. Figure I'll be dual booting something before next weekend gets here.