Lost a user account

  • Thread starter Thread starter acrs
  • Start date Start date
A

acrs

Can anyone help me with a missing user account on XP Home? I am not sure how
or when the account dissapeared, but if I try to recreate the account XP
tells me it already exists. The account does not show up on the Welcome
screen, or under the users control panel. I have 3 other users on the PC and
they are all showing up fine.

If I look under the C:\Documents and Settings then I see the user there with
all there documents etc.

I have followed the instructions below, but under that registry value none
of my users are listed:

<begin> HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows
NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\SpecialAccounts\UserList
Look in the right pane for a value with the missing user's name. If its
there, double click it and set it to 1. If not, right click in the right
pane, select New, DWord value, give it the name of the user as it appears on
the Welcome Screen. Then set it to 1 as above. <end>

I also followed some other info I found on a Google search, but so far I am
unable to restore this user. Is there any way to do it? even if I have to
somehow delete the user and re-create it (I can manually copy the docs and
then paste into new account).

Thanks.
 
It sounds like maybe the built in administrator account which is only
available in Safe Mode or that the account in question is disabled. You can
use the command net users to see a list of users on the computer and then
use the command net user username to see the status of a user account
[account active line] using the actual username instead of username in the
command. Use net help user to find out more about the command including how
to make an inactive account active as in net user username /active:yes. ---
Steve
 
Thanks Steven, using that command I can see that the missing user's account
is active. If I change the logon from using the Welcome screen to the
classic logon and enter the missing users username I can get into Windows.

However, it looks as though its a Guest account (no idea why) is there any
way that the account can be changed to either Limited or Administrator
outside of the user control panel?

Steven L Umbach said:
It sounds like maybe the built in administrator account which is only
available in Safe Mode or that the account in question is disabled. You
can use the command net users to see a list of users on the computer and
then use the command net user username to see the status of a user account
[account active line] using the actual username instead of username in the
command. Use net help user to find out more about the command including
how to make an inactive account active as in net user username
/active:yes. --- Steve


acrs said:
Can anyone help me with a missing user account on XP Home? I am not sure
how or when the account dissapeared, but if I try to recreate the account
XP tells me it already exists. The account does not show up on the
Welcome screen, or under the users control panel. I have 3 other users on
the PC and they are all showing up fine.

If I look under the C:\Documents and Settings then I see the user there
with all there documents etc.

I have followed the instructions below, but under that registry value
none of my users are listed:

<begin> HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows
NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\SpecialAccounts\UserList
Look in the right pane for a value with the missing user's name. If its
there, double click it and set it to 1. If not, right click in the right
pane, select New, DWord value, give it the name of the user as it appears
on the Welcome Screen. Then set it to 1 as above. <end>

I also followed some other info I found on a Google search, but so far I
am unable to restore this user. Is there any way to do it? even if I have
to somehow delete the user and re-create it (I can manually copy the docs
and then paste into new account).

Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Ok I have decided to delete and then recreate the user, I copied all the
docs/settings to another folder on the C drive. I am now trying to use Net
User commands to delete the user. The problem is though that I cannot get it
to work and I have no idea why.

The command I am entering is net user "user name"/delete yet I keep getting
a message saying "The syntax of the command is..........." and nothing
happens. I think I might be getting a problem because of the space in the
user name, however I am not sure about this. Maybe I am just missing a
bracket or something. Apologies in advance but I am not too experienced with
DOS commands.

Thanks.
 
The only difference between the problem listed and mine was that at the
welcome screen a double CTRL-ALT-DEL brought up the classic login prompt and
I was able to login as the "missing" account.

The other post pointed me to the NET command the following command fixed my
problem:

NET LOCALGROUP "Users" "lost account" /ADD

where "lost account" is the "missing" account in quotes to allow for
embedded spaces.

Thank you for the help, I had feared I would have to re-install Windows to
fix the problem and have been postponing it for months.
 
Back
Top