Having a slight issue

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EDollar

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Long story short, my friend just got her laptop back from her ex boyfriend, and wants his stuff deleted... she gives it to me to do, I think no problem. I go to delete his account from a second admin account, and it freezes. I shut down, pull it back up, and his account is "gone" as well as the account I attempted to use to delete it. When I went to recreate the second admin, it tells me there is already a user with that name. It looks like he buried them or something... What can I do to remove his old account, and possibly restore the other without a reformat? I give the dude credit though, hiding the account that tried to delete his account was funny...
 
Perform a System Restore.

Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> System Restore

Select the previous restore point. That, hopefully, will restore the system to where it was before you atempted to delete the account.
 
I have gone through that, and it still is tearing itself apart... now there are no user names, just a place to put in a password... and this is becoming less and less funny
 
Did you try Safe Mode? I had a customer once who couldn't delete an account. We went into Safe Mode, access the account then restarted to Normal Mode then were able to remove the account.
 
For XP Pro, Safe Mode may still require login credentials for the local admin. I have found this to be true on my machine which is running XP Pro. However, I cannot vouch for other machines.
 
I have been all over this thing, it is looking more and more like a registry issue. I have managed to remove the secondary account that was hidden and create a new one, but now every time I log in, I have to change my password to fit some outrageous requirements
 
Have you tried creating a profile with admin rights using a different name? Because you may be on to something with the Registry. The 2nd admin name may still be stored in the registry giving you that message.
 
I was able to get a master admin going, and reduced the ex's to a limited... this whole computer has been changed, and of course, someone didn't think keeping the XP disk was important
 
You can go to a local comp store who can loan you (or give you!) an XP installation CD. The CD alone is not an issue to copy or loan since it's worthless without a product key. So long as you own a product key, anyone can give or loan you an installation CD.
 
That's correct. Even if you do a repair installation, it prompts you for a product key. Without it, the installation or repair installation will not proceed. The CD does contain some 3rd party and value-added software but as far as anything to do with the installation, you must have a product key or you're hosed!
 
See, this is what lead me to ask for some other help. I can't reformat, a system restore didn't work... Any other ideas out there?
 
Who's the manufacturer of that laptop? I'm guessing the warranty has expired or is voided by now? Damn, this sounds like a nasty situation you have on your hands.
 
It's a Dell... And yea, the warranty is long gone. It looks like I may have found and corrected the issue, thank you for all of your help though.

Lib
 
Sweet, good job! :grinthumb

To possibly help other people who may have an issue similar to this, I have to ask...what did you do to fix it?
 
Ya know, I hate to say it, but I don't know. I was a little drunk, decided I didn't care if something went wrong because it couldn't be much worse, and started changing things. It still isn't fully up to par but I think a couple more scans will clean the remaining porn off. I know I was playing in the registry stuff, but being a blonde I don't think I was paying a lot of attention. I do have a HJT log from before I started playing, I will run it again and see what changed and let you know.

Libby :giddy:
 
If it's a Dell and was pruchased sicne July 2004, it may still have the factory image on it. When you restart, press cntrl-F11 at the Dell logo splash screen. A utility should come up called "Dell PC Restore by Symantec" If so, you can click "Restore" and it will restore the factory image and the laptop will be exactly the way it was when she first received it.
 
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