Moving and deleting accounts/profiles

[Slickone]

I have XP Pro and want to delete the personal account that I created during XP's install setup (and is the one I've been using), and want to only use the Administrator account from now on, w/ XP automatically logging into the admin account on boot up.

Seems I remember reading that w/ XP Pro, it will allow you to only have the Admin account and Guest accounts, without a 'personal' user account. But XP Home requires at least one user account, and w/ Home you can only use the admin account in safe mode anyway.? Or maybe I didn't read this. 🙂

Under "Control Panel/User Accounts", I had two:
"Slickone - Computer Administrator", and "Guest - guest account is off".
BTW, I've read a few tweaks that require the administrator account, not just a user w/ admin rights and even though here it says Slickone is Computer Administrator, it doesn't really have the full rights that logging in as "Administrator" does.


Under "C:\Documents and Settings", there were only three profiles, "Slickone", "All Users", and "Default User". If I login as Administrator and it creates an Admin profile, and move everything from the Slickone and All Users profiles to the Admin profile, can I just drag and drop from "C:\Documents and Settings\Slickone" to "C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator", or will some things need to be resinstalled? Netscape 6.x (my primary browser and email) put its own profile (incl all email msgs) in here (C:\D&S\Slickone\...), but I think I can specify this location inside Netscape. I don't really have a whole lot else installed yet. I'll then delete the Slickone profile. Can either the "All Users" or "Default User" profiles be deleted?

Is there not a standard as to whether Apps decide to install in your logged in user profile or the All Users profile?


BTW, in "Computer Management/system tools/local users and groups/users" I had 5 listings:
"Administrator", "Slickone", "Guest", "HelpAssistant", and "Support_######" Why is Admin listed here and not elsewhere? Can I delete any of these? A couple have a red X by them.


Update:
Since typing the above, I went ahead and logged in as Administrator (though at first I couldnt since it wanted a password and I had never given a password when I installed XP, so I had to resest it). So now of course in addition to the above accounts/profiles I listed, there is an admin account/profile, which of course has no settings, shortcuts, etc that I had taken all the time to set in my other user account. If log in as admin and try to copy over everything from my other user account profile, will it let me over write any settings files that are in the admin account? Or will I need to do it in DOS?

Someone has mentioned that I should not use the admin account all the time. It's the first I've heard it mentioned. Any other input on this? I just want to simplify things w/ the least amount of accounts, profile and documents folders as possible. Has anyone else done this?


Also I now have an 'Administrators Documents' folder. On my other user account, I had performed the tweak:
"Delete the key {59031a47-3f72-44a7-89c5-5595fe6b30ee} in
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\
CurrentVersion\Explorer\MyComputer\NameSpace\DelegateFolders."
to remove the Shared Documents folder and Slickone's Documents. I just want to make sure it's OK to do the tweak to remove the Administrator's Documents folder?

Thanks!

 

[max]

Do you know what time it is here 11:00am and i just read that post of your AAAAAAAaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q279783

LOL

anyway the best thing to do is a FORMAT !! it would take me ages to explain all about Groups, user profiles etc... and you will end up doing a format anyway, deleteing all those things 🙂

I suggest getting a book on the subject .. 🙂


Check your Private messages !

 

[Slickone]

Been drinkin a little?

Anyway, anyone else?

 

[peterbrown]

First of all, log on as the administrator and then delete all the other user accounts and turn the guest account off. This can be done at Control Panel -> User accounts. If you want to get rid of everything associated with the user account, also click on delete files.

Next, at a command prompt (run), type:

control userpasswords2

On the users tab, uncheck ' Users Must Enter A User Name And Password To Use This Computer' check box and then click OK

Click the advanced tab, then uncheck 'Require Users To Press Ctrl+Alt+Delete check box'

The next time you boot up, Windows should boot up directly to the desktop, with a noticeable decrease in boot time.

 

[Slickone]

<Sigh>
I dont want to just delete the account. I want to copy the profile over from it to the Admin account.

I already have my Slickone account set to not ask for a password. Just wanted to make sure the Admin account could work that way.

And as I stated originally, my guest account was already off.

Someone on another forum awhile back told me:

"It's a bad idea to login as admin all the time. You would be more venerable to viruses and other programs that may create havoc. It would be just better to kept your regular account and use "run as"."

and

"Well your slickone ID is an admin. So as I suggested b4, use regular account. No need to delete other accounts in in User Management."

Is this true?



I realize my original post may shy away potential readers with answers because it's long, but surely others have already done what I'm wanting to.

 

[DarkSiege]

Try fixing the problem with the XP powertoys...

 

[Slickone]

I've never seen a feature in Power Toys that will move profiles/accounts.
Do tell.