IE7 losing passwords during a reboot

Windows XP SP3 with IE7 (all latest updates). Recently I noticed that after
every reboot I was losing all the stored usernames and passwords in IE7. It
also affects a number of utilities that also seem to use the same credential
storage mechanism (eg Offisync). I think this coincided with a recent
Microsoft Update but I don't know which one. I have searched for other people
with similar issues and it appears that I am not the only person who is
suffering but unfortunately nobody has posted a fix (apart from one guy who
said he had deleted the user profile and started again... not very keen to
follow that advice).

Can anyone help?

Hi Sam,

Try again. It probably is only temporary. Many of MS web services we
off-line as they were updating their own servers with the updates.

If the problem persists, please see your Windows Startup list
(Win+R>msconfig - Startup tab) and try to identify which service is failing.

Nothing to do (per se) with Internet Explorer.

Regards.

"Sam" <> wrote in message
news:E988515F-B1B0-496C-9608-...
> Windows XP SP3 with IE7 (all latest updates). Recently I noticed that
> after
> every reboot I was losing all the stored usernames and passwords in IE7.
> It
> also affects a number of utilities that also seem to use the same
> credential
> storage mechanism (eg Offisync). I think this coincided with a recent
> Microsoft Update but I don't know which one. I have searched for other
> people
> with similar issues and it appears that I am not the only person who is
> suffering but unfortunately nobody has posted a fix (apart from one guy
> who
> said he had deleted the user profile and started again... not very keen to
> follow that advice).
>
> Can anyone help?
>