RobbieA said:
I've just noticed that there are duplicate 'Identities' for myself, son
and
daughter in the Documents and Settings Folder. All have different
'Names'.
I'm showing up as 'Compaq_Owner', and 'Dad.SmithPC'. The kids have two or
three 'Identities' and there is an "Administrator' and 'Default User'
Identity as well. Why are these there and can I delete any of this as I'm
sure they are redundant.
Thanks for any advice.
RobbieA
These are user account folders, yes. And it's not at all safe to assume
that they are redundant.
Before deleting anything, verify that contents are not of value.
User accounts have to be created deliberately, except for the Administrator
and Default User folders. In the case of a reinstall, user accounts might
be copied.
You cannot (and if you could, it'd be an extremely bad idea to do this)
delete the Administrator or Default User folders. Default User is the
template for new accounts, used for creating folder structures with new
accounts. Administrator is the original setup and system administration
account, with full system control. It's very important to keep this and
not to use it as an ordinary user account. Neither of these normally
occupy much space, and their value far outweighs the space.
Compaq_Owner would be the original user account. The dad.smithPC would be
a new user that you (or someone else) created, or is the result of a
reinstall.
The kid's user folders follow the same pattern. Either they were created
deliberately, or were rebuilt (copied) during a reinstall.
In the case of folder structures duplicated by a reinstall, yes, you can
delete the original - it's normally the duplicate that's in use. But you
have to verify and save the data first!
To verify the contents, you must browse into all the folders, including the
mail and address book folders. It's not really fun to realize that these
have vanished from an account folder you didn't realize was in use.
You may also find an ASP.NET user folder, and this is from the .NET
application framework Windows Update.
If you want to just immediately clear some space - get and download
ccleaner,
www.ccleaner.com , and run it in each user account, letting it
clear the browser caches and temporary folders. You may wish to copy the
shortcut to the All Users folder, to save yourself some digging (right-click
on Start, then Open All Users).
You may wish to save cookies, or not. Alternately, search for the
content.ie5 folders and delete them. These are the IE browser caches, and
will be rebuilt on demand. This will quite possibly fail for the account
you're using, so you'd have to log into another account to finish.
Clearing the browser caches, the first time, often recovers several
gigabytes. When done, in IE, reduce the size of the cache to perhaps 25 -
50 meg. You have to do this in each account.
If you're unsure of what folder structures are in use, here's a quick way to
verify. Log into each account, and create a text file on the desktop,
titled, for example, "dadsmithpc.txt". Use the account name as a marker.
You don't need to have much contents beyond a few letters. Be sure you log
into each account. When you're done, use Explorer to browse to the user
folders, and look for the text files in the Desktop folders. Old account
structures from before a reinstall won't have the text files.
Finally, particularly if there was a reinstall, you may have to Take
Ownership to check out the other folder contents. This is easy to do, but
the method depends on whether it's XP Home or Pro.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308421
HTH
-pk
