Travel Technology - Haunted laptop appears to auto-restore!?

So, my boss brings me his laptop yesterday. His email had stopped working and all bookmarks were gone from Mozilla. It looked like his Profile had been deleted and all the configuration information with it.

I installed the latest version of Mozilla, 1.7, along with Firefox, Thunderbird, and SeaMonkey for good measure.

Sent a test message, verified that it worked, packed up the machine and gave it back to him.

This morning he came in - could not send mail. I took a look and ...?

Mozilla had reverted to 1.4. Firefox was gone, Thunderbird was gone, SeaMonkey was gone. It looks like the machine had automatically rolled back to where is was yesterday morning.

Now I can obviously restore all this stuff again, but what could have caused this rollback to automagically occur? Given that the mail problem developed the day before yesterday, if looks like this has happened twice in two days.

Thoughts?

Edit to say I had also installed Norton Systemworks on the machine yesterday. That did NOT vanish. Hmmm... I'm removing that now just in case.

Sounds like someone did a system restore via a restore point...

He might have messed up something after you fixed the laptop, and he panicked and tried to fix it himself via restore point but chose the wrong restore point...

Sounds like someone did a system restore via a restore point...

He might have messed up something after you fixed the laptop, and he panicked and tried to fix it himself via restore point but chose the wrong restore point...

That's the only thing that would make sense to me, except this particular person has no clue what a restore point is, nor how to get to it.

Perhaps one of his kids is playing a practical joke?

Did I mention that his laptop reboots every few minutes a) when he is not actively using it, and b) only at home.

I've had it spinning in my office for hours with nary a problem.

I sent him home with a surge suppressor.. .

Yes if his kids have access to the laptop it's a strong possibility.

Laptops simply do not auto-restore. Software is smart but not that smart.

Best you make an image of his laptop next time you fix it. That way if it's screwed up you can revert it in 20 minutes.

The reboot problem could be a motherboard / memory issue. But there are far too many variables for you to accurately diagnose that. Is it still under warranty? Get it tested if so.

There actually is plenty of software which will do exactly that. Deep freeze, centurion guard, randmind, and more. They're all aimed at public computer labs, not for personal computers. It's conceivable that it's set up to prevent any changes to the system directories from sticking without locking my documents, but it's unlikely. It would be amazing if the owner had never realized that all his changes were forgotten after a reboot.

It would be amazing if the owner had never realized that all his changes were forgotten after a reboot.

:) The behavior started Wednesday. I'm all agog as to what I will find when I drive in this morning.