Desperate, need help with User Accounts

[uniquewon]

I'm not even sure I can explain all of this but: First off, I'm 25 miles from the computer in question, I can run it remotely using logmein.

The computer in question is a Dell 9100 with Windows XP Media Center Addition. I had originally purchased the computer for the friend and did a the setup work and installed all his software etc., for him and delivered the computer to him. There were 4 user accounts at that time, one for him, his wife and one each for his two kids. He has passed away from cancer and during his bout with cancer I find out that the computer no longer can access the network. I screw around and cannot fix it and on top of that, it's pretty screwed up from the kids using it so I bring it home and do a total reinstall, I did the Ctrl+F11 and reload xp from the recovery partition and then proceeded to set the machine up again from scratch, a long and time consuming process. I get it all set up, one user account, no password, called Danette. I take the computer down and set it there and install a couple printers etc., that they had and spent the evening doing show and tell with the wife and kids. I told them that maybe it would be best if they just used the one account which was OK with them. I had installed a webcam on the computer and also SKYPE and during the last few days I notice that the computer is never online, so I call this after noon and talked to Danette and she says the computer is hosed again, much of which I installed is not there any longer, many desktop icons are gone and even Becky Mail is not there with all their email inboxes.

So - I go online to logmein and run the computer remotely and I discover that the account I created, Danette (administrator) is gone and in it's place is an account called Administrator. Thus the reason everything is screwed up that I had installed under Danette. So I look at the file structure with Explorer and I find the structure for Danette and also a new structure for Administrator.

The issue here is I do not know what happened to Danette, it does not show up as a user but when I try and create a user called Danette it says there already is one and I cannot create another.

My question...How do I get this Danette account to show up, where is it, if I could get it to show up, I could log into it and all would be fine. BTW, the wife admitted she may have screwed up while she was in User Accounts, why she was in there is anyones guess.

I need some help and I'm sorry this is so long. I can run the computer remote so I can maybe save me a drive of 50 miles round trip if I can fix this and get that Danette account back.

Please.....????!!!!

Gene

[hughv]

This may help, but sometimes there's no helping the helpless.
Create a new account (Danette1?).
Move the relevant files in C:/Docs and settings/Danette to Danette1.
Alternatively, just create the new account and re-create the settings.

[uniquewon]

This may help, but sometimes there's no helping the helpless.
Create a new account (Danette1?).
Move the relevant files in C:/Docs and settings/Danette to Danette1.
Alternatively, just create the new account and re-create the settings.

Im not sure if your're refering to me being helpless...

But in any case, the problem is partly solved and I have to take just a bit of blame. I have TweakUI installed on that machine, as I do on most machines I use and have. I was looking at solutions to the problem yesterday and noticed that in the Logon section of TweakUI there are settings for controlling some of the log in info, a couple of which allow you to show or NOT show Users on the Welcome screen. I went back online to the machine in question, using logmein, and there was the problem, the show Danette on the Welcome screen was NOT checked. I checked that box, then logged off as that Administrator account and then when the welcome screen came back, there was the user Danette and I was able to log on with that user again and everything was back in place, solved in other words.

It seems there is an account called Administrator no matter what you do, it's even here on this machine plus my account which runs as administrator. Also, it seems that the Administrator account cannot be deleted regardless of there being other administrator accounts.

Thanks for helping out, in the end the problem really was only a check box not checked, who unchecked it is anyones guess, probably she did it but didn't realize what would happen and then when she came to the log in screen, the only user there was Administrator which she logged in with and thus much of what I had setup was not there.

Gene

P.S. I do have one question. How come I can't create users and clone an existing user account. That way the new account would start off with everything setup and then could be tailored a bit for that user.

[hughv]

I was referring to your user.
The Administrator account is part of XP, and I don't think it can be changed.
Other accounts may have admin privileges, but they're not the Administrator account. I don't know this subject in depth, so there's something else to learn.
I've created accounts using the method I described above.
Create the account with custom shortcuts, etc. Copy the appropriate folder (Desktop, for instance) to the new account.
You an test this by creating a dummy account and moving various folders into it.