Solved How to Remove Old Account

boweasel · Oct 19, 2015

A friend of mine bought a used Vista desktop a several months ago and I helped her get it set up. Everything was fine until a few days ago when she began getting the following message on the Welcome screen:

The user name or password is incorrect

Once she gets that message she can click okay or cancel (I forget which exactly), and then she gets a sign-on screen for what I assume is the original user with a password box. She then has to click 'Switch User' to get her name and password box to pop up.

I assumed we could just go to the control panel for user accounts (my friend is an administrator) to delete that other account, but it doesn't display. When I click 'manage another account' the only choices are Guest and my friend.

What is this other account and how can we get rid of it?

MilesAhead · Oct 20, 2015

Accounts in the Administrator Group in Vista and later are very close to the old Operators Group used in NT Server. You can install programs, register activex controls etc.. But you can't do everything. To access the whole enchilada you have to activate the built in Administrator Account. Here is how to do so:

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/67567-administrator-account.html

Once you create it, it should ask you for a new password. Then change user to the Administrator and you can delete the old account from there.

boweasel · Oct 22, 2015

Following your instructions did nothing to alter the process, other than adding ANOTHER (Administrator) user to the sign on screen. On startup I still get the same message as before:

The Vista Globe displays on the black screen
The blue/green screen displays that says 'Windows Vista Home Premium' at the bottom
Right above the word Vista is a white X inside a red circle
To the right of the circle it says 'The user name or password is incorrect'. Underneath that is a selection box that says OK

When I click on OK, I get a user name

cxxxx731@wmconnect with a white box for a password.
underneath that password box is another selector box labeled Switch User
When I click Switch User I get the same blue/green screen with 3 user names - cxxx731@wmconnect, Administrator and Ruth (my friend's name)
Clicking on Ruth gives me the logon screen with only her name and a spot to enter her password

Entering her password gives me the Welcome screen followed by her desktop.

Logging on as the Administrator and going to User Accounts and clicking on manage another account fails to show the cfxxx731 account, so it obviously cannot be removed that way. I would post screenshots if I knew how to grab them without being logged on.

MilesAhead · Oct 22, 2015

In an elevated command prompt please enter this command
net user administrator

and post a screen shot of the results

boweasel · Oct 22, 2015

Here you go...

Vistaar · Oct 22, 2015

Hello boweasel and MilesAhead, googling "wmconnect" suggests that the PC's original owner tried to make WalMart their ISP (in affiliation with Netscape/AOL). Unfortunately the old WalMart software was incompatible with Vista and probably didn't install properly, and I didn't see a good link on uninstalling it. In C:\Program Files, is there a folder called wmconnect or Netscape Internet Service?

boweasel · Oct 22, 2015

Vistaar said:
Hello boweasel and MilesAhead, googling "wmconnect" suggests that the PC's original owner tried to make WalMart their ISP (in affiliation with Netscape/AOL). Unfortunately the old WalMart software was incompatible with Vista and probably didn't install properly, and I didn't see a good link on uninstalling it. In C:\Program Files, is there a folder called wmconnect or Netscape Internet Service?

Thanks for chiming in Vistaar. but no there are no folder in Program Files for anything Netscape or Wmconnect related. In fact a C:\ search turned up nothing for netscape and a lone registry entry for wmconnect.

I still can't figure out how she got a username (to show up on the login screen) that looks like an email address - it's got the @ as part of the name, and AFAIK you can't create a user name that contains that special character. And the user name never shows up even when logging on as Administrator.

This seems like way too trivial an issue to warrant a reinstall.

MilesAhead · Oct 23, 2015

boweasel said:
Here you go...

Can you log into user Administrator or not? What I am thinking is perhaps the first owner of the machine enabled the built in Admin account and assigned it a password, but didn't think to tell you what it was. Then he may have disabled it. But once created with a password if you enable it you would be stuck needing that password to log in.

If that is what happened it leaves the matter difficult to deal with here because there are forum rules against coaching how to bypass passwords etc..

If you cannot log in to Administrator and that is the source of the invalid password error then you need to search how to restore your ability to set the machine up with yourself as the Administrator. The knowledge is out there. It is just that we are proscribed from providing links or explicit reference to it.

E
Edit: I changed the color of the text above to make it hard to read since there is no strike-through available. Rereading your post I see I had the wrong take on what happened. See if the command line approach described here works any better for removing the account:

I can't delete users account - Microsoft Community

boweasel · Oct 23, 2015

No. Nothing from that link did anything. The user name does not seem to exist in any normal MS manner. I actually looks like an email address, even containing the '@' symbol. The user does not display when I click on switch user. When I do that I can only see my friend's name and Administrator (of course Administrator never used to actually display, but it does now, after performing the process in post#2). The ONLY time this user displays is when we boot the computer.

I would love to provide a screenshot, but hitting prtsc before actually logging on fails to save an image to the clipboard.

MilesAhead · Oct 23, 2015

See if this solution will work in your case:
A deleted User account still shows up when starting PC Solved - Windows 7 Help Forums

boweasel · Oct 23, 2015

MilesAhead said:
See if this solution will work in your case:
A deleted User account still shows up when starting PC Solved - Windows 7 Help Forums

No, again. I'd already tried the control userpasswords2 befire posting, but I tried it again. My friend's name is Ruth. When the screen comes up I'm unable (either with the mouse or the up/down arrows) to move off of Administrator. And I don't see what the point would be - the cma****721@vmconnect isn't listed.

And other ideas? Or other forums? My friend is getting antsy - she misses her Facebook games.

Vistaar · Oct 23, 2015

Does the mysterious user have a folder in C:\Users? At this point I'm thinking probably not. I'm thinking Windows was once set to log on automatically to that account at startup. Perhaps the person who did this typed the password incorrectly...or perhaps "the user name or password is incorrect" because the old account was removed, or maybe just renamed Ruth?

I'm thinking what you want to do is Turn Off Automatic Log On, which should be as simple as checking the Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer box in your screenshot and clicking OK. It might be safer to first try setting Ruth's account to log on automatically. Here's a tutorial that Brink posted when Vista was young: http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/66966-logon-automatically.html?ltr=L

virtual6 · Oct 24, 2015

In his account screen, the deleted user is not displayed, so I wonder if checking users must enter name and password will be applied to the deleted user?

boweasel said things were okay, then this user name/password issue started...what changed?

Are there any registry entries for the cxxxx731 (or whatever) name (I'm thinking about Security Identifiers [SIDs] ).

boweasel · Oct 24, 2015

I don't know exactly what I did to effect the change. But when I now start the computer it now automatically bypasses any of the earlier nonsense and takes me directly into the desktop of..... the Administrator. No password needed. The only way to currently sign on as Ruth is to let the PC automatically boot to the Administrator desktop and hit Switch User. Then I get the screen with only two users - Administrator and Ruth. Clicking on Ruth then prompts me for her password, and then we're good.

So I guess I'm finally seeing an upward turn...

MilesAhead · Oct 24, 2015

What happens if you now disable Administrator from the command line?

MilesAhead · Oct 24, 2015

Vistaar said:
I'm thinking what you want to do is Turn Off Automatic Log On,

That is what the last link I posted was all about. Step by step.

boweasel · Oct 24, 2015

ALMOST there. And thanks for your help, guys. Control userpasswords2 is not at all intuitive and I was perplexed by the sometime inability to move the selector OFF of Administrator. The only current small problem is that when I boot I am presented with 2 user names - Administrator and Ruth. Selecting Ruth works as it should, but AFAIK the Administrator is user only visible when booting in safe mode. It is now visible in normal mode. I'm sure following the link back in post #2 is the culprit.

Should I just disable that hidden Administrator account?

boweasel · Oct 24, 2015

Yes, that was all it took.

MilesAhead · Oct 24, 2015

boweasel said:
Yes, that was all it took.

Great! Glad you got the inconsistency resolved.

Solved How to Remove Old Account

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