Lost User Account

[morganjohnd]

In XP Home, I ran lusmgr.msc, created a new non-administrative user account,
and rebooted, then found that my usual administrative user account John was
"gone," along with all of its My Document files, including lots of images and
music. Now I'm unable to access it. It's still listed in Local User and
Groups. But when I boot the computer, it logs on to the default Administrator
account; John is not an option. John is still listed under Documents and
Settings in Windows Explorer, but I get an error message when I try to open
it, saying "C:\Documents and Settings\John is not accessible. Access is
denied." Its properties say it has 0 bytes. I tried a couple recovery
software programs, which "saw" the files - they were shown - but wouldn't
recover them, saying they were not deleted. The total size of the hard drive
hasn't changed. So how do I get the files and the account John back? I've
tried System Restore, which is useless; it just keeps saying Cannot Restore.
Help, please....

 

[JS]

Error Message: "Access Is Denied" XP Home:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/823306/en-us

Also read this MS KB article about how to take ownership of files.
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=308421

Understanding and Applying NTFS Permission in Windows XP Professional
http://www.winxpsolution.com/ApplyingNTFSXPPro.aspx

There is also a utility named: Unlocker
I have not used it but it has been mentioned a number of times.
http://ccollomb.free.fr/unlocker/

JS

 

[windmap]

See whether the user account is visible in windows safemode.

 

[Nightowl]

Hi John

In XP Home, I ran lusmgr.msc, created a new non-administrative user account,
and rebooted,

I didn't think you *could* run lusrmgr.msc in XP Home -- but if you can,
it's not a good idea to create new accounts this way, as it can have
unexpected results, as you've found. Only use this or control
userpasswords2 to change passwords or logon, not to create or modify
accounts.

then found that my usual administrative user account John was
"gone," along with all of its My Document files, including lots of images and
music. Now I'm unable to access it. It's still listed in Local User and
Groups. But when I boot the computer, it logs on to the default Administrator
account; John is not an option.

Your John account may have been moved to the Guests group. You can check
this when logged in to your Administrator account by opening a Command
window and typing:

net localgroup guests

See whether it lists John as a member.

John is still listed under Documents and
Settings in Windows Explorer, but I get an error message when I try to open
it, saying "C:\Documents and Settings\John is not accessible. Access is
denied." Its properties say it has 0 bytes. I tried a couple recovery
software programs, which "saw" the files - they were shown - but wouldn't
recover them, saying they were not deleted. The total size of the hard drive
hasn't changed. So how do I get the files and the account John back? I've
tried System Restore, which is useless; it just keeps saying Cannot Restore.
Help, please....

Try this, John:

From your Administrator account, open a Command window and type:

net localgroup administrators John /add

Hopefully you should see a message saying the command completed
successfully.

If the John account *was* in the Guests group, you can remove it from
there after adding it to Administrators by running this command:

net localgroup guests John /delete

Then reboot and see if John is now visible. You mentioned that your
computer is automatically logging in to the Administrator account; I'm
not sure if that's because that's the only account it can "see" at the
moment, or whether you may have set it to auto log-in using control
userpasswords2. If you did, you might need to go back to userpasswords2
and tick the box "Users must use a password. . ." first, before
rebooting. Or you can override the automatic log-in by holding down
Shift as you reboot. If you've been able to recover the John account,
you can then go back and set the computer to automatically log in to
that.

Hope this is some help