Windows XP User Account

[Brandon]

Hey everyone. I have my first computer job, everything has went well until now so I came here for help. The computer had some spyware and viruses, and I removed them. Everything was back to normal and I updated all spyware and antivirus software. I installed the Autopatcher and ran it. When I went into Control Panel I noticed there were 2 user accounts shown. So I deleted the second one. I restarted windows, and now it goes to the welcome screen to tell me to click on an account to enter windows but there are none listed! I don't know how to get them back. I put in the UBCD4win and am now typing this with that computer. I have tried going into the Control Panel, then User Accounts but it gives me a message saying that it cannot open User Accounts.

What do you guys recommend I do? Am I going to have to reformat? Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Windows XP Home SP2 is the OS on the computer I'm working on.

 

[Brandon]

I started it up in SafeMode and went into User Accounts. Created a new one and rebooted. Everything is back to normal as of right now. Does anyone have any ideas on why there would have been 2 User Account Icons in the Control Panel. The only thing I sould suspect is Spyware/Virus? I will go ahead and run the AV and Spybot SD again. Sorry for the wasted post. I paniced and shouldn't have.

 

[JohnR]

Depends what the two accounts were. It's entirely possible to have multiple accounts in User Accounts without any of them being capable of being logged in to - SQLAdmin accounts, for example, and Visual Studio accounts. And, of course, Guest.

It's also possible that, if you were in Safe Mode, you saw the Administrator account (and were logged in under it) and you deleted the normal user. Reboot, and XP Home (since it doesn't allow you to log in as Administrator except in Safe Mode) showed you all available accounts: none.

The point is, there's all kinds of reasons why there might be multiple accounts in the control panel. The real question is, what are the accounts.

Also: First principle of support. Don't panic. Going into Safe Mode was the smart move, and it solved your problem nicely.

(Second principle of support: Don't do ANYTHING without a reason for it, and a reasonable expectation of what you're going to accomplish. It's okay to be wrong, but you need to be able to defend your decision.)

 

[JohnR]

Another suggestion: If you ever want to log into an account that doesn't appear in the quick list - for example, Administrator on an XP Pro machine - press CTRL-ALT-DEL, twice. You'll be taken to a standard login screen, where you can type any username you want. It doesn't do you much good on XP Home, though, unless you're in Safe Mode, because you can't get in to Administrator on XP Home outside of Safe Mode.

(PS: 99% of everyone doesn't set a password on Administrator. This is useful. Not quite as useful as single-user mode on a Linux machine, but useful.)