No users on Welcome Screen after using cntrl passwords2 in XP Home

G

Guest

Sorry that this is long, but I tried to give as much detail as possible. Thx
for reading.

I have several pc running XP pro and recently I purchased a laptop with XP
Home Edition. I attempted to make it more secure by changing the 2 users from
administrator policy to a little more secure like power user. (That's what I
use on my XP Pro PC). So I opened the group policy on the XP Home using
control passwords2 and checked Power User, but it gave me an error stating
that policy does not exist. I tried on the other user with same result. I
exited the screen. When I rebooted, all user have disappeared from the
welcome screen. Attempted to ALT-Ctrl-del twice and login into administrator
and received error " unable to log in because of account restriction" Booted
into safe mode and logged into Admin account, and could not find the other 2
accounts anywhere. I did see that the folders and all the data was still
there under documents and settings. I created another user with admin rights
Ex. Test user. Rebooted, ctrl-alt-del twice typed in one of the lost users
names (ex. John) and I was in. But I noticed that John account was logged in
as Guest user rights (policy) and was unable to make any changes due to its
account restrictions. Than logged on to Test user with admin rights and again
was unable to find the other to users anywhere or in any group policy to make
any changes to them.
My guess is that since the Home edition only has Administrator and Limited
user policies that guest policy for users does not exist therefore Win XP
home does not recognize or see this type of policy restriction, which I
believe might be an error in windows.

My question here is how can I find the 2 users and change them from guest
rights back to administrator rights . Also have them appear back on the
Welcome screen.
Thank you for your time. Any help or ideas will be appreciated.
Drew
 
G

Guest

Home has guest users as does xp pro,xp home does not have group policy as
pro has.Try going to my computer,use search to locate user(s).
 
P

Patrick Keenan

Rezzen said:
Sorry that this is long, but I tried to give as much detail as possible.
Thx
for reading.

I have several pc running XP pro and recently I purchased a laptop with XP
Home Edition. I attempted to make it more secure by changing the 2 users
from
administrator policy to a little more secure like power user. (That's what
I
use on my XP Pro PC). So I opened the group policy on the XP Home using
control passwords2 and checked Power User, but it gave me an error stating
that policy does not exist. I tried on the other user with same result. I
exited the screen. When I rebooted, all user have disappeared from the
welcome screen. Attempted to ALT-Ctrl-del twice and login into
administrator
and received error " unable to log in because of account restriction"
Booted
into safe mode and logged into Admin account, and could not find the other
2
accounts anywhere. I did see that the folders and all the data was still
there under documents and settings. I created another user with admin
rights
Ex. Test user. Rebooted, ctrl-alt-del twice typed in one of the lost
users
names (ex. John) and I was in. But I noticed that John account was logged
in
as Guest user rights (policy) and was unable to make any changes due to
its
account restrictions. Than logged on to Test user with admin rights and
again
was unable to find the other to users anywhere or in any group policy to
make
any changes to them.
My guess is that since the Home edition only has Administrator and Limited
user policies that guest policy for users does not exist therefore Win XP
home does not recognize or see this type of policy restriction, which I
believe might be an error in windows.

My question here is how can I find the 2 users and change them from guest
rights back to administrator rights . Also have them appear back on the
Welcome screen.
Thank you for your time. Any help or ideas will be appreciated.
Drew

I don't have an XP Home install here to check this, but here is something to
try.

Get into the machine, right-click on My Computer and choose Manage.
Expand "local users and groups", and go to Users. You should see the users
there. Right-click on one and choose Properties, then Member Of. Make
them members of the Administrators group, save the changes, and restart.

Also, TweakUI will help provide easy control over which accounts appear on
the Welcome page. That's on the Logon section.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx

HTH
-pk
 
G

Guest

PK thx for the response,

There is no "local users and groups" in XP Home.

also TweakUI does not see the missing users either.
Thx, Drew

:
 
G

Guest

Andrew thx for the rely:
I realize now that home does not have a group policy like XP Pro has, thats
how i got into this mess :). It assigned the users a guest policy by
default when i tried to assign them as "Power Users" and removed them form
the pc.....Like I mentioned in the original post the search does find the
users folders and data but I am unable to find them under control panel- user
accounts-. and they disappeared from the welcome screen.
Thx, Drew
 
G

Guest

PK, I also wanted to mention is that's exactly what I want to do is to change
the guest user to administrator, but I can not find them. I logged into admin
account in safe mode and into a newly created user with admin rights and had
no luck finding the guest users.
 
P

Patrick Keenan

Rezzen said:
PK, I also wanted to mention is that's exactly what I want to do is to change
the guest user to administrator, but I can not find them. I logged into admin
account in safe mode and into a newly created user with admin rights and had
no luck finding the guest users.

Do their folders still exist? Does the new account you created appear in
TweakUI or on the welcome screen?

If so, the quickest fix may be to create new user accounts and copy the data
from the old user accounts. If the new accounts can't use the same names,
just vary them slightly. In some cases, you might need to take ownership
of the old folders to get the data to the right places.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/811151

Note that with this you may have to transfer some data manually, like OE
message stores. And you'll likely need to regenerate basic mail accounts.

HTH
-pk
 
G

Guest

pk
The folders do still exist. The new account is visible in TweakUI and on the
welcome screen.
Thanx for the alternetive solution. I might have to just transfer the data
to a slightly different user name. But this is driving me crazy!!!! I can log
into the account by pressing ctrl-alt-del twice but the accounts are nowhere
to be found otherwise.
I keep thinking that this is an error in windows code (XP Home edt) . It
allowed me to check of "power User" than switched me into guest rights
without question and hid the users. arrrrrrrhh.
thx pk

p.s.
I will keep trying to found out what happened here and how to fix this
problem.
 

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