When I startup, the desktop starts up without any icons. i.e. no startup taskbar or anything. I ended up reloading windows and got the system running again, but now I have some time I would like to get my old settings working. When I go into Explorer, I have three entries. NAME, NAME.HOME, NAME.HOME.000. I can go into the first and third entries but the second entry always comes up with access denied. I have checked one of your other entries about going to My Computer, Tools, Folder Options, View and unchecking Use Simple File Sharing, but this didn't do anything. Its like some virus got onto my machine and corrupted this directory so that on startup it can't locate the personal settings.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

What operating system are you using?

If you think you have a virus, I recommend scanning with MalwareBytes. But I don't think that's your problem.

Malwarebytes.org

I don't really understand the NAME, NAME.HOME, and NAME.HOME.000. Are these three subdirectories that you see in the C:\documents and settings\[username] subdirectory?

Simple File Sharing is for sharing files with another computer. You don't have to use that, but more than half of home computers do.

I think it's likely that one or more of the NAME, NAME.HOME, or NAME.HOME.000 directories is/are bogus and has no useful information in it.

If you did what's referred to as a 'dirty install' of windows, then those folders appear in C:\Documents and Settings\ like Perito said, right?

Disabling simple file sharing was the first step, but you need to go a bit further to get to those files. Your old folders don't know that your user account is supposed to be able to access them since they're from a different installation of windows. Right click one of the folders, and click on the Security tab (which shows up after disabling simple file sharing), then click on advanced, then click the Owner tab, you should be able to make yourself owner of the folders. Once you're the owner, you can go back into the security tab and give yourself permission to open the folders.

Somewhere along the way, it will probably say you don't have permission to view the security details, and ask if you want to take ownership and set default permissions. That ought to work too... but I'm not quite sure where that message pops up.