Disappearing User Profiles

[edmanley]

Hello,

Hopefully this problem will be a fairly straight forward one. Twice
in the last couple of weeks I've had user profiles seemingly being
deleted by Windows without warning. In both cases this has come after
creating a new (Administrator) account. All of the data and documents
are still held in C:\Documents and Settings\User.. but the profile
icon disappears from the Startup user selection screen and from the
User profile settings. When you try to recreate this user in the
settings it says the user already exists.

Is there any way of recreating the user, or a user, and associating
the existing parameters with this user? This kind of thing can
obviously be quite disruptive. Can anyone also inform me as to why
this might be happening?

Any help would be very warmly recieved,

Thank you,
Ed

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Hello,

Hopefully this problem will be a fairly straight forward one. Twice
in the last couple of weeks I've had user profiles seemingly being
deleted by Windows without warning. In both cases this has come after
creating a new (Administrator) account. All of the data and documents
are still held in C:\Documents and Settings\User.. but the profile
icon disappears from the Startup user selection screen and from the
User profile settings. When you try to recreate this user in the
settings it says the user already exists.

Is there any way of recreating the user, or a user, and associating
the existing parameters with this user? This kind of thing can
obviously be quite disruptive. Can anyone also inform me as to why
this might be happening?

Any help would be very warmly recieved,

Thank you,
Ed

Does the user disappear or just become invisible on the logon
screen? You can find out by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del at the
logon screen, then entering the user's name and his password
in the boxes provided.

 

[Rock]

Hello,

Hopefully this problem will be a fairly straight forward one. Twice
in the last couple of weeks I've had user profiles seemingly being
deleted by Windows without warning. In both cases this has come after
creating a new (Administrator) account. All of the data and documents
are still held in C:\Documents and Settings\User.. but the profile
icon disappears from the Startup user selection screen and from the
User profile settings. When you try to recreate this user in the
settings it says the user already exists.

Is there any way of recreating the user, or a user, and associating
the existing parameters with this user? This kind of thing can
obviously be quite disruptive. Can anyone also inform me as to why
this might be happening?

Any help would be very warmly recieved,

Are these accounts that you or someone else created, or is it the built in
Administrator account that has disappeared? If the latter that is normal
behavior. If the built in Administrator account is the only admin level
account on the system, and then a new account with Admin privileges is
created, the Administrator account is hidden from the Welcome Screen.

To access it, for XP Pro, at the welcome screen do ctrl-alt-del twice and
type Administrator and the password. For XP Home the built in Administrator
account will only be accessible from the Welcome Screen in Safe mode.

You can copy the data and settings from this account to a new, admin level
account. See this link for info:
How to Copy a User Profile
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/win_xp_logon.htm

 

[edmanley]

Are these accounts that you or someone else created, or is it the built in
Administrator account that has disappeared? If the latter that is normal
behavior. If the built in Administrator account is the only admin level
account on the system, and then a new account with Admin privileges is
created, the Administrator account is hidden from the Welcome Screen.

To access it, for XP Pro, at the welcome screen do ctrl-alt-del twice and
type Administrator and the password. For XP Home the built in Administrator
account will only be accessible from the Welcome Screen in Safe mode.

You can copy the data and settings from this account to a new, admin level
account. See this link for info:
How to Copy a User Profilehttp://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/win_xp_logon.htm

Yes indeed it is the Administrator account that has disappeared. I
just wanted to check that there's nothing chronically wrong with the
PC. I'll copy the profile data over to a new one using that method
you sent through.

Thanks again,
Ed

 

[Rock]

You're welcome.
--
Rock [MS-MVP User/Shell]

Yes indeed it is the Administrator account that has disappeared. I
just wanted to check that there's nothing chronically wrong with the
PC. I'll copy the profile data over to a new one using that method
you sent through.

Thanks again,
Ed