Documents and Settings Question

moose4,

I believe I encountered the same issue.  When you say, your account and ID, by ID, do you mean the name assigned to your computer?   I contacted Microsoft, and they had no explanation.  I suspect, however, that the accounts with the name and computer ID were created when I did a system restore.  Did you do a system restore?  In any event, Microsoft advised me that the original accounts could be deleted (after checking for any data files that I might wish to retain).  However, I didn't like having unexplained accounts with the computer ID attached, so I did a clean install.  Perhaps a rather drastic measure, but the problem was resolved. 

I have on a couple of occasions had a ghost account of that type (myname/computername) appear in Windows Explorer. It does not show up under user accounts applet in control panel, and I could find no reference to it in the registry. After checking that it contained nothing useful, I just deleted it and nothing untoward happened. Rather less drastic than saving all data to CD/DVD and doing a clean install!

I have not noticed that this is related to using system restore, but I have not tried systematically to see if that is the cause.

Thanks for your reply.  You stimulated me into doing some poking around.....

1. Yes, when I specified ID, I was referring to my computer name.

2. Yes, I have done four system restores (all successful).  When you refer to deletion of "original accounts", I assume you mean the account names without the ID.  (This must be the case because the accounts with the ID contain all my accumulated data (cookies, favorites, etc.), as opposed to the original accounts which have very little data (none of it really mine).

3. I checked the account folder 'creation dates' and here is what I learned:

\Default Users and \All Users and \Administrator (the original)--and the overall folder \Document and Settings--were created by Dell before shipment .

\MyName (without ID) was created when I first turned the computer on.  \MyName.ID was created when I did my first system restore.  \Administrator.ID was created when I did a later system restore.

 

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RogerXPSGen2 wrote:   I suspect, however, that the accounts with the name and computer ID were created when I did a system restore.  Did you do a system restore?  In any event, Microsoft advised me that the original accounts could be deleted (after checking for any data files that I might wish to retain).  However, I didn't like having unexplained accounts with the computer ID attached, so I did a clean install.  Perhaps a rather drastic measure, but the problem was resolved. 

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I would not delete the original accounts. In my case, my user name account remained perfectly good, with all my data files etc. in it. It was the ghost account (myname/computername) that contained nothing and that I deleted without ill effect.

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@JRosenfeld wrote:
I would not delete the original accounts. In my case, my user name account remained perfectly good, with all my data files etc. in it. It was the ghost account (myname/computername) that contained nothing and that I deleted without ill effect.

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You words are a bit late (thanks anyway) since I went ahead and deleted the original accounts.

It is odd that the location of "new" material (files, shortcuts, etc) appeared in your original accounts (the ones without the computer name), whereas in my case all the new material appeared in the later accounts (myname/computer name).

In any event, everything appears fine.  For safety sake, I have not emptied the deleted folders from the Recycle Bin (I'll wait a week).

Incidentally, the 2 deleted accounts consumed just over 100MB, most of it for a Dell advertising video.  This video still appears in 3 of the 4 remaining accounts.

 

Well, personally, I would delete the copies you don't need, but of course that is entirely your call.

I don't have any Dell videos, but presumably you don't need several copies (or are some of them shortcuts to wherever the actual video is filed?)

There are no shortcuts to the videos....each file is the same video (simply repeated).