messed up user account

[WSpetrus1928]

I’ve been asked to help a friend whose problems started with a lost user profile following a windows 10 update. I managed to retrieve his data files using Linux and following unsuccessful attempts to retrieve his user profile, I suggested that he reset his system and restore his data from the backup. I don’t know what happened but his user files are quite messed up.
* C:/Users folder lists:-  Administrator, Default, Joe Daniels, Jazza, Public, and Temp
* Win10 settings/Accounts lists:- Joe  Daniels                                                                                       * Control panel/User accounts lists only Joe Daniels. (also Administrator if  ‘manage               another account’ is selected).                                                                                                          * Power shell command ‘net user’ lists:-  Administrator     DefaultAccount          Guest                                                                                          Jazza             WDAG Utility Account     —                     * cmd ‘netplwiz’ lists Administrator and Jazza.            Jazza properties show full name              as  Joe Daniels.        NB:-  entering %USERPROFILE% into file explorer takes one to               Joe Daniels where all his files reside.

As I’m uncertain of the best way to tidy things up, I’d appreciate some guidance from those more experienced than I am. I do have all his data on an external drive. Also, I’d prefer not to have to reinstall his programs. Many thanks in advanced. Peter

 

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[WSpetrus1928]

I hope that you can make sense of all this. I’m sorry that the formatting didn’t come out as intended, so I’ve tried attaching a properly formatted .rtf file

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[Paul T]

I can’t see what is wrong with that layout. User data is stored in %userprofile% as expected.
What is the issue?

cheers, Paul

p.s. to make a list, use one of the buttons at the top of the edit box.

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WSpetrus1928, doriel

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[doriel]

Its unclear to me, how tiding should repair issue

I’ve been asked to help a friend whose problems started with a lost user profile

Is Jazza or Joe Daniels one of its “lost accounts”?
Which account is he missing?

Since Jazza is present in list of net user command, it tells me it is local account. I wonder Why Joe Daniels is not in the list. Is that domain account?

Dell Latitude E6530, Intel Core i5 @ 2.6 GHz, 4GB RAM, W10 1809 Enterprise

HAL3000, AMD Athlon 200GE @ 3,4 GHz, 8GB RAM, Fedora 29

• This reply was modified 1 month, 3 weeks ago by doriel. Reason: oh grammar

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WSpetrus1928

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[b]

doriel wrote:

Since Jazza is present in list of net user command, it tells me it is local account.

Net user lists all accounts, including Microsoft accounts.

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WSpetrus1928

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[PaulK]

Is User Joe Daniels the Administrator?
Is the data for Joe, the full and complete data that you have captured externally?
What is the data situation for Jazza?
– None, some, a lot?
– Duplicate of Joe Daniels?
What data are in Temp? Quantity?
(Concerning the “WDAG Utility Account”, I had to do a Search for it. It is legitimate. Ignore it.)
What is (was?) the name of the ‘lost user profile’?
Have you been informed that there are/should-be additional users present?

Is the system usable, that is, can one log on and run programs OK?
– And log on under what name?

Note: It is perfectly valid, although perhaps unusual, to have in the Users folder a folder with a name that is not that of a logon-able user. But normally a defined (logon-able) user will have a folder within Users; it is possible, however, that the folder name is not the logon name. May this be a source of confusion here?

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WSpetrus1928

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[WSpetrus1928]

The problem is that Joe & Jazza seem to be interlinked although they seem to be separate accounts and both administrators.  When I looked at the properties of Joe’s documeents and other folders, they pointed to Jazza. I have since fixed that with a suggested registry adjustment re user profiles that I found. The system now boots into Joe’s profile, and all of his files are where they’re supposed to be. The only unusual thing is that when I open a command prompt, its starting point is C:/users/Jazza. I’m just about at the point of resetting windows and starting with a clean slate, especially as there are backups of Joe’s data. I do greatly appreciate the helpful suggestions, so please accept my thanks.

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[WSpetrus1928]

correction – my bad! cmd.exe opens up as expected

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[Bob99]

Open up a regular (non administrator)  command prompt and then open an elevated (administrator)  command prompt to see if they both open to the same directory. Please let us know what the results are.

R/
Bob99

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WSpetrus1928

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[WSpetrus1928]

Thanks for the suggestions. I’ve discovered what went amiss, and why there was so much confusion. Firstly, Although Jazza is the admin user, the computer boots to Joe Daniels, and all of his files are in his folder in C:/users. The confusion arose because he is shown as an admin user in settings, whilst the net user command and netplwiz both list Jazza as admin user. It was only when I discovered the command net user %usernames% that I discovered that Joe Daniels was listed as the full name of the user Jazza. So, the users Joe & Jazza are the same, and it depends where one is in the system as to the answer one gets when asking who the user is. I suppose it happened during the process of recovering a lost user profile due to the faulty windows update that impacted many users. I could enable the hidden Administrator account, then delete Jazza, and create a new user account and reinstate his data. But that would entail reinstalling a range of apps. I’m more inclined to let sleeping dogs lie for the time being because the system appears to be working OK as it is.  Once again, my thanks to those who have offered heeelpful suggestins

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doriel

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[Bob99]

On behalf of @b , @PaulK , @Paul-T , and @doriel , you’re Very Welcome!

R/
Bob99

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[Bob99]

Good to hear you were able to straighten out a really confusing situation. Maybe you could tell the friend just what you found and try to convince them to allow you to back up the profile of the account they want to keep and then delete the other one to avoid future problems.

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[doriel]

Good to hear, that issue is disappearing now 🙂

I could enable the hidden Administrator account, then delete Jazza, and create a new user account and reinstate his data. But that would entail reinstalling a range of apps.

This may not be nescessarilly true. Apps may be installed for all user and they can be available under your Administrator account, which you are going to enable. You will need to set the password before enabling Administrator account.Prefered application settings are usually stored in
C:\Users\%USERPROFILE%\appdata\

Small question:
Why you do not create new user and add him to Administrators group? That should be more elegant and correct way. Its not recommended to log into your computer as Administrator. Im not saying its not possible.. but.. Sometimes you can notice, that Administrator has not access to the internet for example 🙂 not joking.

Maybe you could move some folders from the old Appdata directory and copy them for a new user. Then you could have the settings transfered. I would do this one by one, not the whole Appdata directory. I do this for our users when they get new PC. I have to transfer files from old to new computer in the location:
C:\Users\%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\SAP

So, the users Joe & Jazza are the same, and it depends where one is in the system as to the answer one gets when asking who the user is. I suppose it happened during the process of recovering a lost user profile due to the faulty windows update that impacted many users.

Yes, that is correct. sometimes your profile does not match the folder name. After renaming, migrating, or restoring, there can be changes. After restoring in the past, since then, my profile folder is named name.000 🙂

Dell Latitude E6530, Intel Core i5 @ 2.6 GHz, 4GB RAM, W10 1809 Enterprise

HAL3000, AMD Athlon 200GE @ 3,4 GHz, 8GB RAM, Fedora 29

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