Re: Cant access User Accounts XP Home

From: Kent W. England [MVP] (kwe_at_mvps.org)
Date: 05/16/04 

Date: Sun, 16 May 2004 10:20:03 -0700

Mike wrote:

> Working on a laptop for a friend, and she had multiple user accounts setup
> and wanted me to delete all but hers.
> When i go into User accounts in the control panel it opens up a blank window
> with a home, back and forward buttons but that's it.
> I tried booting in safe mode and logging in as administrator and get the
> same result.
> I tried running SFC /scannow to see if any system files had been corrupted
> and that didn't help.
> Im also unable to open Help and Support for XP.
> The system did have a few viruses and spyware. I cleaned it up using
> MacAfee's command line scanner and then installed Antivir, Adaware, Spybot,
> CWS Shredder and scanned and deleted the appropriate files. Ran another full
> system virus scan with Antivir and the system appears clean.
> I can browse the internet, but IE hangs when i go to Windows update when it
> try's to check for the windows updater tool.
> Stumped at the moment and considering starting from scratch. Any ideas?
>
>
If you want to try to fix things without doing a repair install or a
complete reinstall, then check
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList
to see what accounts currently exist. You will find SYSTEM, LocalService
and NetworkService under the "short" SID keys and Administrator and your
unique accounts under the longer SID keys. This tells you how many
accounts that Windows recognizes and the ProfileImagePath shows you the
account profile folder, but doesn't necessarily help you fix the problem
with User Accounts.

You can compare the list of active accounts to the set of user profiles
under Documents and Settings to see which profiles there might have been
orphaned.

Run "control userpasswords2" and see if she set any of her accounts to
be other than "Administrator" or "User". If this is XP Home Edition, you
often have trouble if you set accounts to Power User or anything other
than Administrator or User (aka limited). Set the account types back to
Administrator or User and then see if you can access them properly. 

-- 
Kent W. England, Microsoft MVP for Windows Security
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