Windows XP User account missing in account management

[Neeidea]

I can't find this anywhere so far, so here goes. I have just cleaned off a load of malware from my home PC (XP Home, sp3) and have since been getting loads of explorer.exe read and write errors (crippling amounts!). I still cannot fix this, but read yesterday that deleting all accounts except the main user account might help to fix the problem.

We only have the main account (with admin rights) plus one other (my son's) in normal startup. In Safe Mode there is only the main account and an Administrator Account, which I did not create so I assume that's a Windows way of doing things.

So, I went to the User Account management in Control Panel to delete my son's account, but I could only see my own (the main user account). There is no sign at all of my son's account or the Admin Account which is visible in Safe Mode. My son's shows at normal startup along with my own.

Does anyone know why I cannot see his in the account management?

Thanks

 

[Mike the tech guy]

Hi,

It could be that his account settings were set to private when the account was created. What you may need to do is logon the pc as him and then go to user accounts and then it should let you change the account type to a limited user, which should remove the privacy setting. Hopefully you can then log back in as yourself(or administrator) and delete his account. Hope that helps.