Groundhog Gus wrote:
Did anybody else have problems with both these updates? Aug update had I
believe 10. After insalling them, my desktop screen was changed & my
colors were changed. All of these have now been hidden cause I do not
intend to fix all my sounds and colors and desktop screen. Then along came
Sept updates and then my sounds were gone. They too have been hidden and
auto updates has been changed by me not to run automatically anymore. I'll
install what I want. As far as I know, there was never any warning that
all my preferences were about to be changed. It would be nice to be warned
ahead of time that changes will be made without my approval. Anybody else
have problems with them ??

I agree with Bob F ("significantly different problem").

*******

Copies of the registry are stored in System Restore.
Perhaps using a restore point will back out the damage.

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tuto...restore-guide/

Before doing anything, you'd want to do a complete backup
of the system, so no "experiment" can make things worse.
Then restore from your backup, if you're unhappy
with the progress achieved. Any time I'm doing something
dangerous, I do a backup first. I have a 2TB and 3TB drive
for storing backups of my OSes.

Since System Restore can be disabled, there might not be
any restore points, in which case that option is lost
to you.

During malware cleanup, restore points would normally get
trashed, to prevent malware staged in there from coming back

The lost settings could be related to a damaged profile,
but I don't know anything about that. And System Restore
is the only trick up my sleeve.

The problem might even be related to some recent changes
you made in Accounts. (I.e. You're no longer "you" any more.)

If the computer has buried malware, sometimes a Windows Update
conflicts with that, and trouble ensues. (Machines infected with
TDSS were bricked, when Microsoft updated atapi.sys in one
of their updates.) Do an occasional scan of the system, to look
for that.

If you're thinking "Microsoft trashed my settings and colors
on purpose", no, that's not a common symptom. What you're
seeing is a side effect of something else, unexpected.
Microsoft has no way of predicting what infected systems
will do, when updates are received.

I'm not saying the problem is malware, but when a problem
is not shared with a lot of other users, you have to
look further than obviously botched updates. The updates
that kept installing themselves, hundred of people posted
about those. And that's a clue Microsoft screwed up, in
that many users seem the same symptoms. In this case,
losing your settings, sounds like more of a problem
with your machine and system state, just before the
Windows Updates were installed.

Paul