On 12 Jan 2011, at 11:36, paolo savonuzzi wrote:

> On 12/gen/2011, at 12.25, Alan & Elaine wrote:
> 
>> I'm coming into this exchange in midstream, so possibly my comments are obsolete, but it seems to me some of your problems might be symptomatic of a dying pram battery. 
> 
> ... do pram batteries still exist? in laptops too? :-0

I've no idea, but something held all Elaine's laptop's settings and clock ticks while I swapped (defective) power batteries a couple of months back. That might have been a charged capacitor, but my comment was intended to query whether the problem might lie in the power area rather than in software; If you lose power, things reset to factory settings, which is what seems to be happening with you.
Incidentally Apple said the batteries failed because the MacBookPro was left attached to the mains supply. 


regards,
AlanD

> 
> anyway... possible but very unlikely as I see the same simptoms on two different Macs and... since day one :-/
> -- 
> paolo