Thank you very much for your reply. I considered trying that, the only issue I have with that option is hard drive space. I don't have enough to copy and paste. I'm trying to do a complete backup of the files first, but am running into problems with I/O device errors and semaphore timeouts, primarily with my music files. I've even been moving the files over one at a time so not to overwhelm the system. I have 194 gigs of music alone, so you can imagine how much fun that's been. I was hoping there was a way to simply restore the user since the files are there. My restore points have also been wiped out. That was the first thing I tried after pulling that huge boner. I had two restore points, both failed, then simply disappeared.