I have several Linux distribs on different partitions on a SATA drive and a PATA – with the orig Win installations on it.
Recently when installing a new os , Grub appears to have changed the assignment of hd0 and hd1 around . I did a rough and ready reassignment with the active menu.lst and the Linux oses were accessible again, as was W2k.
However I soon had complaints from family that the desktop had changed in Win. Outlook express was wanting to do a fresh install and the icons had reduced to just a few.
This evidence was enough to think doing something silly and reinstalling but the solution was elegant, although I took some time to research it on inet.

I found a good item on Outlook Express and your article. The upshot was that Outlook had multiple files managed as part of an OE identity.
However this identity was created for the users W2k profile.

Since both icon and OE setting had gone, it was likely to be a profile issue.

Using GETSID, I found ProfileList in the registry and adjacent to the key – which ended xxxxx001 was another almost identical one ending xxxxx001.bak

After making some preparations against disaster ( incanting ” Bugger, this had better work..” repeatedly), I renamed the active one as something else, then the .bak was removed from the second (and then placed on the first over the temp extension to be doggedly conservative).

On restarting the computer and w2k all was well with the lost profile restored and with Outlook Express restored as part of that.

So thanks again for providing the process to get the info needed to simply undo a little W2k knot. ( I still do not know how the glitch with grub affected W2k although it is the only change that I am aware of )

cheers
bob

The same registry trick resolved the problem. Thanks much!!!

Hint: if you cannot install getsid, just search the registry under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList for the bad (“new”) profile directory name, and change the “ProfileImagePath” accordingly.