[footfootfoot]

I did not intend to fuck with docs and settings, I was just doing some house cleaning on other drives when I hit delete in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sometimes stupid shit happens when you don't mean it to. I think I checked a box to delete ini files rather than ignore them.

I am doing memtest86 right now, but the two events were coincidental and unrelated. The real problem is that three .ini files cannot be removed from the trash because they refer to unavailable locations. docs and settings and two other folders are also missing, though their sub folders appear in searches. when you use the up arrow key to move up in the folder hierarchy you hit unavailable when you get to the top. There are now three new folders corresponding to the missing folders with "deltest" appended to the folder name.
e.g. C:\Documents and Settingsdeltest

I don't have my notes handy and don't recall the names of the other two folders right now. I can't rename any of the deltest folders by removing deltest because I get a message saying the specified name already exists.

So what it seems to me is that the folders are missing their ini files and without them they can't be located, and yet they cannot be renamed either.

I suppose worst case is I have to re-install XP.