User account has disappeared (sort of)

A standard user account has disappeared as a login option. It's also no
listed under the user accounts on my control panel. HOWEVER, the file
are still all there under C:\users etc and it is still listed in th
registry edito

Any thoughts on what I can do to bring it back to life

This came about after I used a third-party password recovery too
(whoops) but I can still access my administrator account luckily.

Any thoughts greatly appreciated

--
happypa
Posted via http://www.vistaheads.co

Have you tried a sysytem restore going back to the date you could still see
the standard account ?
"happypad" <> wrote in message
news:...
>
> A standard user account has disappeared as a login option. It's also not
> listed under the user accounts on my control panel. HOWEVER, the files
> are still all there under C:\users etc and it is still listed in the
> registry editor
>
> Any thoughts on what I can do to bring it back to life?
>
> This came about after I used a third-party password recovery tool
> (whoops) but I can still access my administrator account luckily.
>
> Any thoughts greatly appreciated.
>
>
> --
> happypad
> Posted via http://www.vistaheads.com
>

Yep i tried that - it said the system restore could not completely
properly due to an error.

When I used that third party program I tried to raise the standard user
account to an administration account level. However, it seems to have
just made it disappear (I can't use the program to lower it back to a
standard user account unfortunately)

I suspect I might need to do something with the registry?


--
happypad
Posted via http://www.vistaheads.com

Not that it matters now, but why would you need a 3rd party program to
change an user account to admin account ?
"happypad" <> wrote in message
news:...
>
> Yep i tried that - it said the system restore could not completely
> properly due to an error.
>
> When I used that third party program I tried to raise the standard user
> account to an administration account level. However, it seems to have
> just made it disappear (I can't use the program to lower it back to a
> standard user account unfortunately)
>
> I suspect I might need to do something with the registry?
>
>
> --
> happypad
> Posted via http://www.vistaheads.com
>

Because I had forgotten what the administrative account's password wa
(I also cleared that account's password using this program - I trie
both these options to get round it

--
happypa
Posted via http://www.vistaheads.co

In Vista, normally, the primary or built-in administrator account should be
disabled. It is supposed to become enabled when all other administrative
accounts are lost or corrupted. When Vista is first installed it asks for a
user name. That first additional user account will be created as an admin
level account, no choice.

You should then proceed to add another user account, this time a standard
user account. That's the one that should be used for the "daily driver", with
the first account that you created being reserved strictly for administrative
use.

I'm not sure I understand the history of how you have worked with this
system, but it sounds as though you may have run afoul of a setting in this
location in the registry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows
NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\SpecialAccounts\UserLis t

If you log in as an admin user and go to that location, look in the right
pane for the "hidden" or "missing" user account name (DWORD). If it's value
is set to 1, then the account got hidden somehow. If you change the value to
0, the account should become available to you again. Be careful when editing
the registry.

Also, if the account still exists you should still be able to log on to it
-- even though it's hidden from the Welcome screen. While sitting at the
Welcome screen, just hit Ctrl-Alt-Del twice, type the account name and
password into the spaces provided, and proceed with the logon. You might want
to try this first (before firing up regedit) just to be sure the account
really is there. The account could be deleted or corrupted and not available.
That would not preclude the folders still being there under the Users
directory.

I hope this is helpful. I'm afraid I'm kind of confused about the exact
status of that system.

"happypad" wrote:

>
> Because I had forgotten what the administrative account's password was
> (I also cleared that account's password using this program - I tried
> both these options to get round it)
>
>
> --
> happypad
> Posted via http://www.vistaheads.com
>
>

Hey thanks for your post. I tried to find this but I don't have the
subfolder 'SpecialAccounts' unfortunately:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows
NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\SpecialAccounts\UserLis t

Also tried your CTRL + ALT + DEL trick but that doesn't bring up
anything either


--
happypad
Posted via http://www.vistaheads.com

Shucks! I was hoping for you. It really does sound as though the actual
account is gone. I'm aware that there may be methods of recovering it, but
it's not something I could give advice about. For me, it's always all about
the data, and reconstructing most systems -- unless the recovery is easy,
which it would have been if the acount had merely been hidden -- is almost
always a less productive use of time than just recovering the data and doing
a from-the-ground-up reconstruction.

If the profile location is still there, however, then the data should be
present within that folder structure. The data in the documents folder can be
moved into a newly created standard user account, and the data under AppData
can also be moved into the new account profile, with certain provisos
regarding methodology. You can then make the files inherit permissions from
the appropriate parent folders so that they are usable by the new user.

Will that process work for you?

"happypad" wrote:

>
> Hey thanks for your post. I tried to find this but I don't have the
> subfolder 'SpecialAccounts' unfortunately:
>
> HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows
> NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\SpecialAccounts\UserLis t
>
> Also tried your CTRL + ALT + DEL trick but that doesn't bring up
> anything either
>
>
> --
> happypad
> Posted via http://www.vistaheads.com
>
>

Great - I'll try that

--
happypa
Posted via http://www.vistaheads.co

"happypad" wrote:

>
> Great - I'll try that!
>
>
> --
> happypad
> Posted via http://www.vistaheads.com
>
>

Just be careful to keep the original stuff intact (Make copies of the data,
rather than moving it.), in case you make mistakes as you go through the
process of making the data available in the new account/profile. It's not a
bad idea to make a copy of the data to external media (writeable CD or DVD,
or at least another hard drive), too.

Good luck! Remember that some apps, like Firefox or Outlook Express, create
unique (quasi-random) folder names for storage of data under the profile.
You'll need to deal with that when copying this type of data (if any) to the
new profile.

Good luck!