Startup fail/repair changed my settings?

[lmm6877]

I have a Dell Inspiron 7010 running Windows 7 64bit. When I started it up today it wouldn't start and was just a black/grey screen (I have it hooked up to the TV w/HDMI and it was also a black/grey blank). So I powered it down manually and it was still on but went completely black in the monitor, so I held the power button again and it shut off. Then when I started it back up it said that windows could not start up and I chose repair (sorry, I don't remember exactly what it said). It "repaired" and then restarted the system on its own.

First thing I noticed was that my 2nd user account picture (the one I use often) was changed, and it had been changed to regular user instead of admin like I had it set. I had also chose to hide a few icons in the toolbar that are now not hidden, and my recently viewed files were old and wrong. Likewise when I got online I found a restore page on my browser for pages that I had not been on the last time (I had also closed mozilla completely the last time so no need to restore) and my mouse scroll settings are wrong.

I don't know what else I will find that has changed, but it looks like maybe it did a system restore to some point or something. I still have recent files that I downloaded yesterday and the past few days, but I am worried what else has been changed and irked that my account has been altered. I thought maybe I could restore it to another point myself but when I hit open system restore nothing happens. I ran a scan for bugs and found nothing. I would like to know how to go about investigating or recovering my old settings and whatever may be lost. Anyone have an idea what may have caused this and what exactly has happened and how I can find out? Thanks for your help!

 

[shanky887614]

it will probably have done a system restore.

your files should be fine but program settings might have changed.

 

[lmm6877]

it will probably have done a system restore.

your files should be fine but program settings might have changed.

Thanks for your reply. My files do seem to all be fine, however Microsoft Word stopped working, and I get an error when I go to the mouse settings (the feature you are trying to use is on a network resource that is unavailable) - still lets me in if I hit cancel twice though - but is still weird. Waiting to see what else has changed. Such a strange thing to happen out of the blue like that - argh.