Problem with My.Settings - VS 2008, Excel 2007, VB.Net

[JVW]

I've developed an Excel add-in with VB.Net that is installed in several
customer sites. It is deployed with ClickOnce which has been working great.
I also have several default settings in the configuration file. Most of
these never change but a few are set up by the user when it is first
installed and then never touched after that.

All of a sudden, 3 times in the last week I've had users whose settings
reverted to the original installed value and I know they didn't do it
themselves. There have been no new versions sent out in months. It even
happened to me. I know that the users didn't do something because the
initial values are things like "Server_Name" which they have to re-set to
their local server name after installation. There's no way they would
accidentally type that value back over the setting.

These users have gone along fine for months and all of a sudden the
configuration file reverted back to the install values. Does anyone have an
idea how this could happen?

 

[JVW]

I've developed an Excel add-in with VB.Net that is installed in several
customer sites. It is deployed with ClickOnce which has been working great.
I also have several default settings in the configuration file. Most of
these never change but a few are set up by the user when it is first
installed and then never touched after that.

All of a sudden, 3 times in the last week I've had users whose settings
reverted to the original installed value and I know they didn't do it
themselves. There have been no new versions sent out in months. It even
happened to me. I know that the users didn't do something because the
initial values are things like "Server_Name" which they have to re-set to
their local server name after installation. There's no way they would
accidentally type that value back over the setting.

These users have gone along fine for months and all of a sudden the
configuration file reverted back to the install values. Does anyone have an
idea how this could happen?

I posted this originally but didn't get any replies. It just happened again
today. The user's database name is in My.Settings and the user changes it
from "MyDatabase" to whatever their specific database name is when they first
install the software. I save their name in My.Settings and after that
whenever they load Excel my program knows what database name to use.

Today, I loaded Excel and it said it couldn't find the data. I looked at
the setting and My.Settings had been changed back to "MyDatabase". Nowhere
in my code does it contain the string "MyDatabase" so somehow it's reverting
back to the original Configuration file from the dll.Config.Deploy file.
That file still exists in the installation directory (remember this is a
ClickOnce application). I don't reference that file in my software but it
seems like somehow VB.Net is getting it.

Has anyone else ever seen anything like this?