I recently made some system changes - in particular, installing SQL Server 2012 Developer (though I can't swear that this is what caused the problem). When I rebooted, I noticed that all my path information seemed to have disappeared. Applications requiring path information fail to start.
If I go to a command window and type "echo %path%", I see a list of just three seemingly unrelated folders. (The second folder is one that I created manually):
**PATH=C:\Program Files\Mercurial;C:\MyLibs;C:\Program Files\CVSNT**
This path is just my user-define path variables, missing the system-defined ones.
I can't find any command script, autoexec, config, or anything else that sets the path this way. I tried to go into advanced settings by right-clicking Computer, selecting Properties, and clicking Advanced System Settings. That gives me the error "Windows cannot find '%windir%\system32\systempropertiesadvanced.exe'. ...*"
The fact that this system executable isn't found by Windows seems to indicate that other environment variables besides PATH are also changed. However, when I located and manually ran the properties .exe mentioned above, I see that it lists all the variable values that it should. I conclude that something must change the values after the startup process has finished running.
How can I find out what is different in my network vs. non-network startup profiles that would cause this?
