Vista Tutorial - Can't create new user account

I have Vista on Dell Inspiron laptop. When I go to Control Panel and attempt to create a new account by clicking on Add or Remove account, nothing happens. The link does not open. I am the administrator on this computer.

When you click on the "Add or remove user accounts" link, UAC should prompt you for permission to continue. That would be the first thing that you would see.

Is the permission dialog box hiding behind something? It doesn't show up on your taskbar, but your screen should dim and it should be on top, unless you've somehow managed to bring something else around.

Is UAC on or off? Control Panel->Security click on Security Center look to the bottom for "Other security settings," click on the down arrow to show the status of UAC.

Has Windows been activated? Winkey+Pause look to the bottom of the System panel to see the Windows activation status.

-solon fox

Thanks. I just checked, UAC is On.

Hi effiya and welcome to the Vista forums

You eventually can create a new user account this way:
Click start, in the search bar type in: netplwiz then press enter, the advance accounts control panel should open (i hope)

Anyway, you maybe should verify the integrity of your system files:
System Files - SFC Command

Hope it helps.

Thanks Sid. This worked like a charm! Cheers! Effiya

I am having the same issue except that when I open the user window I can get to it and type in a new user but when I click to create it never creates the user. I was able to create the user using the netplwiz though thanks. This is only the tip of the iceberg of my profile problems. I cannot give myself permissions to see files and folders in the security tab. i get access denied for most of the files. Also somthing happened to my main profile causing any web page that uses Ajax or Flash to not work or error out. My secondary profile that was created earlier this year works fine and I migrated the main profile user files over so I have not lost much in the way of configuration, email or files. Can anybody shed some light on this issue. Since i could do little in the USer Accounts menu i could not delete or add users to blow this profile away. That is Microsofts answer to me.

regards
crazym

Hello effiya and crazym, welcome to the forums!

Try this:
Hit Start -> Run (Windows + R) -> cmd

From here type:
net user USERNAME /add

+Rep me if I helped,
ZeratuelX

I have already created a new profile using the netplwiz. But thank you anyway.

Sorry about that crazym - I did read your entire post, though, and I have a question. The new user that you created - is it a user in the administrators group?

I assume that you are now using the new profile exclusively, but that doesn't mean that there aren't hidden things in the Registry that are preventing all sorts access from both the old account and the new account. So, another question I have is have you performed any tweaking on your computer, especially when you were still using the old user account, such as taking ownership of files / folders / registry hives?

No I have not taken ownership of anything that I am aware of. And I am switching back and forth between the new account and the old account so I can migrate old information such a s email addresses and program configurations. It is a slow process. I copied my entire visible file structure under the old user and the app data hidden folder but some of the program info did not migrate. The problems I am experiencing seem to be related to an MS update that happened around November or December of last year.