That's good news. It's also very interesting. So did you rename the Guest
account to Guest&son before you ever logged into the account? (I'm asking
because the name of the folder containing the profile should be take the name
the account has the first time the account is used. If you have an account
named Pat and log on to it, and then rename the account to Mike, when you
look under the Users folder you'll still see that Mike is using the Pat
folder structure. This is because Windows actually identifies the account by
a method of identification that doesn't change with the account name change.
And that account continues to use its original folder structure -- unless
that folder structure becomes corrupted or unavailable for some reason.) And
for some reason the account was unable to load the account until that folder
was renamed to Guest?
Just for grins, your other renamed account(s) that contain an ampersand --
what are their folder names? I would guess that you logged onto those
accounts BEFORE changing the account name to something with an ampersand in
it?
This is very interesting. And it almost makes me wonder if Windows has some
problem loading a profile from a directory structure containing an ampersand.
I wouldn't really expect that, though, as I said before, I've certainly seen
third party software that wasn't happy with ampersands in path names.
:
STOP THE PRESSES! I GOT IT FIXED!
It wasn't that difficult! I was looking at the Computer\Local Disk (C
\Users Folder and discovered that, in addition to a "TEMP" User I'd never
seen before the Guest Account was still there under the name "Guest&Son" in
"Windows Explorer - or whatever you call it in Vista. I checked the
subfolders and the Favorites held the web sites I had set up for guests to
log into Hotmail or AOL, etc., so I KNEW this was my original Guest Account.
I simply renamed it to "Guest" and it now works as intended. The "TEMP" User
has disappeared from the directory. Quick, get me to my backup processes and
back up EVERYTHING! ;-) !!!!!!!!!
:
That's very interesting, and it explains why you can't correct the issue. If
Vista allows us to log on as Guest and then rename the account only from
within that account, and then if that account won't load properly any more,
the pretty much cinches the deal, doesn't it? Heh.
If I can find a victim machine and the time I will definitely look into this
because it's interesting. At my job I have to support all sorts of
intelligent end users who do ill-advised (in retrospect) things to their
computers because they expect stuff to "just work". I think most people
figure that the operating system should object (or downright refuse to
cooperate) when it's asked to do something that's going to screw it up. Of
course it's easier to say that an OS should protect itself than it is to
write an OS that actually protects itself. Still, I think this was an odd
oversight on the development team's part.
Of course on my domains I enforce policy that prevents the Guest accounts
from being enabled on any of the domain members, so this is not a problem I'm
likely to have to fix. That reduces my need to worry about it, but I would
still like to find a fix -- if there is one. Because you just never know... I
have, on occasion, had to support systems that were not members of my domain,
and on which the end user had administrative control.
BTW, speaking of the OS protecting itself -- didn't UAC object at all when
you renamed the Guest account?
:
I have Home Premium. At one point I thought I might want to upgrade because
you can not back up the C: drive in my version. However, I found my DVD
burning SW does that at much less the cost of a Vista upgrade.
I tried some more renaming this morning by taking out "Guest" altogther and
replacing it instead of just the ampersand appendage and previouse name, but
the damage is done. If you attempt this, my steps were to log on as Guest
(can't seem to do it from Admin), go to User Accts, and change name (you'll
be prompted to enter the Admin User password). Appreciate your interest, but
you do not have to spend your time messing up another box unless you're
really into this.
Somewhere in the cobwebs of my memory, I think I recall a tip that I should
have saved my Registry from day one and maybe that would have allowed me to
cobble back together just the Guest entries. Don't know that much about it,
but if the Registry has Guest, maybe I could copy&paste that portion from a
clean install onto my desktop and activate it?
:
You've just gotta love that! The system lets you make the mistake, and then
won't let you correct it. At least not easily.
You mentioned the possibility of upgrading to Ultimate, but I don't believe
you said which version you are running currently. I'm not familiar with any
of the home versions, since I've been interested only in the business or
enterprise versions for the time being. Is Ultimate the only home version
that has the policy editor? Yikes! I'd read that Microsoft was going to be
introducing a "home server" product soon, and I would presume that it would
(or at least could) be used to set up active directory domains at home. It
would seem to be part of a proper strategy for marketing such software to
have the client operating systems capable of participating in a domain. Or
maybe the idea is to sell the server OS and then get the user hooked on
"upgrading" his client operating systems to a more expensive version. If so,
very clever -- and darned near diabolical.
Anyway, I doubt that the likelihood of a policy-editor-enabled version being
able to fix the issue you have now is high enough to warrant the expense of
the upgrade -- at least not if that's the only reason for the upgrade. If I
had a spare box running Vista right now I'd try to duplicate your problem and
see if the policy editor does offer a solution. I'll scout around and see if
I can find a "victim" here at work!
;-)
:
Forgot to mention that, yes, I did try renaming Guest&son to Guest, but big
brother seems to know and see everything so I can't pretend I did not foul
this up.
:
Thanks for the info & tips. Yes, I wish Vista had told me "You can't do
that!" It DOES tell me in the Help results for the key words "User groups in
Windows" that I can't play with MMC unless I upgrade to Ultimate. I'll sleep
on this and do more pondering.
:
No prohibition against using it (ampersand), but I've seen ampersands in
folder names (which might be transferred to the user account folder
structure, depending upon whether or not the account was renamed before the
account was used) cause some issues with various types of software which
might not expect that character in a data directory path. Though maybe not in
this OS because it has lots of safeguards.
The information in the help file is interesting, and sort of confusing. You
see, there really is a pre-made policy available to rename the Guest account
(and the primary Admin account). I would never have thought of going into the
user accounts control panel to rename either of those accounts because
they're "special" and should probably not be dealt with as you would other
accounts. If you have one of the versions of Vista that has the policy editor
you can find the policies I'm referring to under the Security Settings
section. I'm really surprised, however, that the user account applet allowed
you to rename the account -- if it really is such a big deal. The help file
didn't warn of dire consequences. It just said that you "can't" rename it.
Someone ought to tell the help file folks that "can't" means can not, not
should not.
Unfortunately, I can think of nothing useful to suggest -- other than to ask
if you tried renaming Guest&son to Guest?
Startup repair is, I think, unlikely to help with this issue. I believe it
is aimed primarily at fixing boot issues caused by deletion of a WinXP
partition on a dual boot system and other such scenarios. If renaming the
account to its standard format doesn't work, and if use of the policy editor
(if available in your version of Vista) doesn't work, then I'm thinking
system restore may very well be your best bet. I agree, however, that it's
likely to cause you some headaches in sorting out the status of the system
afterward. I think of system restore as a last resort tool to be used to make
a recalcitrant system give up the data -- just before a wipe and a clean
installation. I used it once under WinXP on one of my own systems and wasn't
satisfied to accept the result for ongoing operations. I've used it lots of
times to fix other peoples' systems, and always insisted on a clean
installation following data recovery.
I hope you find a solution -- and that you tell us what you learn!
:
For usual web use, my wife & I (note use of ampersand) use a standard user
account, i.e. "Jerry&spouse." I see no prohibition against using an
ampersand. I had a standard account for my son who used it very little and
then moved 3,000 miles away. In keeping with our ampersand habit, we decided
to simply rename Guest to "Guest&son" so that when he or house guests visit,
they can access the Internet or get web mail. Using my Admin account, I
deleted his standard account and renamed the Guest account. Now it says
something to the effect that the Guest account did not load properly" and it
loads a "temp user account" where no favorites or settings stick.
Go to Start\Help and Support and enter the key words:
"Rename a user account"
"Notes
You can't change the name of the guest account.
A user name can't be longer than 20 characters, consist entirely of periods
or spaces, or contain any of these characters: \ / " [ ] : | < > + = ; , ? *
@"
:
I'm curious. What help file did you read that told you that you cannot rename
the Guest account in Vista? There's a policy for doing so in the policy
editory, so I'm thinking there's something amiss. Did you use the security
policy, or did you rename the account some other way? Anyway, the thing that
strikes me about your message is that there's an ampersand (&) in the name.
That's not a character I would choose to put into an account name.
Another question. Is there a particular reason you are using the Guest
account? Normally I'd leave it disabled. Do you need to allow people to log
on anonymously to this system?
:
Before reading the Help file that says you can NOT rename Guest, I did change
it to "Guest&son". Now the Guest account starts as a "temporary account" and
says my Guest account did not start properly and I've lost the Guest
favorites like Hotmail that I'd set up there plus any future additions made
hereafter. I ~think~ the renaming event was the killer, but can't recall if
there were any other changes I made that day that might have corrupted the
account. I don't use Guest often.
Can "Startup Repair" get me back or what do you suggest? I'd rather not go
back to a restore point as I've updated so many drivers since then. Thank
you for any tips.
