Win2K Reinstall doesn't remove old profiles

  • Thread starter Thread starter William W. Plummer
  • Start date Start date
W

William W. Plummer

I messed up the permissions on my file system and couldn't dig my way
out. Along I created many extra users and their profiles. I decided
to use the big hammer to get things back to normal. I booted the Win2K
CD and confirmed that it was going to wipe out the existing files, etc.
But it didn't take out the profiles and in fact created another one
for me.

Of course to get all the latest updates takes 10 Windows Updates and
reboots. And I didn't even get to reinstalling Office.

Is there a fast way to get rid of the profiles, leaving only the one I
want to use and renaming it to get rid of the machine.instance? Or, do
I have go all the way down to formatting the partition and reinstalling?
 
William W. Plummer said:
I messed up the permissions on my file system and couldn't dig my way
out. Along I created many extra users and their profiles. I decided
to use the big hammer to get things back to normal. I booted the Win2K
CD and confirmed that it was going to wipe out the existing files, etc.
But it didn't take out the profiles and in fact created another one
for me.

Of course to get all the latest updates takes 10 Windows Updates and
reboots. And I didn't even get to reinstalling Office.

Is there a fast way to get rid of the profiles, leaving only the one I
want to use and renaming it to get rid of the machine.instance? Or, do
I have go all the way down to formatting the partition and reinstalling?
Click to expand...

You can do this to clean the slate:

1. Log on as Administrator.
2. Rename every folder under "c:\documents and settings" to some
different name, except for these:
- Administrator
- All Users
- Default User
3. Log on as some other user.
4. When you're satisfied that you haven't lost anything, delete the
renamed folders.

If you still have things that you do not want then you need to take
a closer look at the All Users folder. Move unwanted things out
of this folder until you're satisfied.
 
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