I'm the systems engineer for a company with just under 400 workstations. We run Novell NetWare 6.5 as our NOS, with some additional Windows 2000 and 2003 servers to run Windows specific netware applications. Our desktop is Windows XP Pro. We have our own Windows update server and update the workstations during the night.

At one job site, four users complained about not being to log in. We found that they could log into the Novell network, but not into their workstations. Examining the workstations by logging in as Administrator* revealed that both their user account and profile in Documents and Settings had been removed. (*That password is not available except to the IT staff.)

All four workstations were fully patched to date, both for Windows XP and virus protection (Authentium Command Anti-Virus). None of them showed that the employees had installed any unauthorized software. Nor was there any evidence of worms or viruses.

The only clue is that all four workstations had disk problems. Two were relatively minor and two had more serious problems, but CHDKSK /R fixed them.

In the end all we could do was to apply utilities to recover what data files we could and recreate their accounts. (Only one employee had anything approaching a recent backup.)

We have about thirty other people at the same location who haven't (yet) experienced similar problems. I am truly bothered by this situation since I haven't yet come up with any reasonable explanation of what caused the problem in the first place or how to prevent it from reoccurring.

All help will be gratefully and greatly appreciated.

Lynn Circle