Cannot delete User Accounts

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ken Springer
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Ken Springer

I'm helping an online friend whip his old Dell Dimension 8200 back into
shape, using Teamviewer. He's one of those users who thinks he knows
more about computers than he does. :-)

I'm also slowly changing his bad habits, but to do so, we need to change
the way he's been using the user accounts he created. He is the only
user of the computer.

XP Home, fully updated w/ MS Update installed.

Somehow, and I don't know how, he's managed to get two accounts
intermingled/intermixed, I'm not sure of a good word to describe it.

Currently, there are 3 accounts on the machine, two he created and one I
created.

I want to delete the two accounts he created, but XP won't let me.

With all 3 user account profiles "active", i.e. they show up as being on
the computer at the login screen, if you enter one of the accounts, then
open Task Manager and click on the Users tab, only two of the three
accounts are listed. One is mine, and that account I'm not worried about.

All his data is safely copied to a separate partition (temp partition
just for this purpose) so loss of his data is not an issue. He'll
probably have to rebuild his Dell Imaging (OEM software) database, but
I'm not worried about that.

What's the easiest and quickest way to delete the two accounts he
created since XP seems to simply lock up?

I don't want to ask him to reinstall XP, he's already done that once,
and I'm sure it won't go over well. On the flip side of that, we
finally got Verizon to acknowledge they had a connection problem that's
now fixed, so it might not be that difficult of a sell. :-) As part
of "spiffing" up his computer, I got all his data from C:\ to another
partition, so no worry about losing any data there.

I've not yet Googled this problem, got my own irons in the fire that
I've got to get to! LOL

--
Ken

Mac OS X 10.6.8
Firefox 13.0.1
Thunderbird 13.0.1
LibreOffice 3.5.2.2
 
I'm helping an online friend whip his old Dell Dimension 8200 back into
shape, using Teamviewer. He's one of those users who thinks he knows
more about computers than he does. :-)

I'm also slowly changing his bad habits, but to do so, we need to change
the way he's been using the user accounts he created. He is the only
user of the computer.

XP Home, fully updated w/ MS Update installed.

Somehow, and I don't know how, he's managed to get two accounts
intermingled/intermixed, I'm not sure of a good word to describe it.

Currently, there are 3 accounts on the machine, two he created and one I
created.

I want to delete the two accounts he created, but XP won't let me.

With all 3 user account profiles "active", i.e. they show up as being on
the computer at the login screen, if you enter one of the accounts, then
open Task Manager and click on the Users tab, only two of the three
accounts are listed. One is mine, and that account I'm not worried about.

All his data is safely copied to a separate partition (temp partition
just for this purpose) so loss of his data is not an issue. He'll
probably have to rebuild his Dell Imaging (OEM software) database, but
I'm not worried about that.

What's the easiest and quickest way to delete the two accounts he
created since XP seems to simply lock up?

I don't want to ask him to reinstall XP, he's already done that once,
and I'm sure it won't go over well. On the flip side of that, we
finally got Verizon to acknowledge they had a connection problem that's
now fixed, so it might not be that difficult of a sell. :-) As part
of "spiffing" up his computer, I got all his data from C:\ to another
partition, so no worry about losing any data there.

I've not yet Googled this problem, got my own irons in the fire that
I've got to get to! LOL
Click to expand...

First you need to make sure that there is at lease one Administrator
account on the system. Then you need to login using that account (i.e.
Administrator account) and then manage your other user accounts
including deleting the ones you don't want.

If you are not sure if the account being deleted is itself an
Administrator account then just create another one with all the Admin
privileges on that account and then login using that new account to do
the necessary user management.

Hope this helps.

--
Good Guy
Website: http://mytaxsite.co.uk
Website: http://html-css.co.uk
Forums: http://mytaxsite.boardhost.com
Email: http://mytaxsite.co.uk/contact-us
 
Hi, Good Guy,

First you need to make sure that there is at lease one Administrator
account on the system. Then you need to login using that account (i.e.
Administrator account) and then manage your other user accounts
including deleting the ones you don't want.

If you are not sure if the account being deleted is itself an
Administrator account then just create another one with all the Admin
privileges on that account and then login using that new account to do
the necessary user management.

Hope this helps.
Click to expand...

Been there, done that, as they say.

The account I created is an admin account from the outset. I was logged
into this account when trying to delete on of the original accounts.
When it hung is when I started getting copies of his data to the temp
partition I mentioned.

Ran out of daylight before trying to remove the 2nd of the original
accounts, but that's my next step unless someone here comes up with some
foolproof quick way to remove the original accounts.


--
Ken

Mac OS X 10.6.8
Firefox 13.0.1
Thunderbird 13.0.1
LibreOffice 3.5.2.2
 
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