by Ken Task.
Have one more question for investigation ... front page (course ID 1) roles.
First, don't admin any servers that have needed to change default roles on front page.
On servers where there is only authenticated users, the backup of the front page does have a users.xml and consist of only those users that are admin levels (vr. 3.1.highest). And there are no forums on front page either. Backups are very small.
Did help a gent one time that had some admin menu links displayed to students ... uhhhh, not good ... and it turned out to be roles assigned to front page. After reverting roles (even deleting one that had been used when the site was remotely hosted with a Moodle Partner), that no longer happened.
Ok, am really out of ideas now!
'spirit of sharing', Ken