How to delete user account and profile on Vista

I have read already googled but all the instructions available do not describe the options I have on screen. Most of them described a "Delete Account" button where Vista will prompt whether want to delete user files also but I do not have that. Others describe the registry method, for corrupted profiles.

Instead, in "User Accounts", I have the "Remove account" button which Vista will then prompt that the user will not be allowed to login anymore. Which, in fact I still can!

Additionally, under the "User Accounts" window, there is a "Configure Advance User Profile Properties" to bring up a "User Profiles" window. Within that, the only listed profile is my current logged in profile.

My computer is Vista Busines SP2, in an Activce Directory domain, but not using roaming profiles. I am deleting mydomain\user from mydomain\admin both accounts are local admins

What are the steps to properly delete the user and account?

Jake

Posted 2011-05-18T02:38:25.273

Reputation: 1 587

Answers

Thanks for answers here. But they did not solve my problem. I found out that logging in to safe mode as an administrator helped.

Vista and 7: After logging in, go to Control Panel > User Accounts > Configure Advance User Profile Properties (from the side panel) and a dialog with all user profiles will appear and available for deletion.

XP/Win2k3: The button for accessing the same dialog is located at My Computer (right click) > Properties > Advanced tab.

Jake

Posted 2011-05-18T02:38:25.273

Reputation: 1 587

Computer Management -> Local Users and groups ->, select the account and select delete to delete the account.

m_core

Posted 2011-05-18T02:38:25.273

Reputation: 1

There is only an Administrator and a Guest which are both the built-in accounts. When I first "created" the account, I simply go to "User Accounts" and then add the domain\ad_user and set him to Administrator. Is what I did correct? – Jake – 2011-05-18T03:23:33.907

Maybe I'm understanding this wrong. You will be able to remove the local settings for the user on the workstation, but it's an Active Directory user account. So the user is still on the domain and has access to login to computers. You can delete the local user settings all you want, but the Active Directory account will still check back to the domain, see that it is a valid account and let them login to the computer.

Nixphoe

Posted 2011-05-18T02:38:25.273

Reputation: 566

I am talking about the "User Profile" at C:\users\ad_user . That is what I cannot delete. Directly deleting it will cause a bunch of permission issues. I also cannot reset the persmissions due to Access Denied on ~xxxx.tmp files – Jake – 2011-05-18T03:18:59.137

Have you tried after a reboot? – Nixphoe – 2011-05-18T14:51:47.017

yes, reboot many times already. I finally managed to remove the profile files and folders by going into Safe Mode and brute force registry delete and permission settings. I still hope to know the proper way to doing this. – Jake – 2011-05-19T05:14:54.087