Re: User Accounts not Appearing on Welcome Screen


"Nepatsfan" <nepatsfan@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:%232WrEM4WIHA.5340@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"Ken Triebold" <iebold@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:ewb7nr2WIHA.4696@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I have volunteered to keep the computers running at my local library. We
have four computers on an Ethernet network. They are all running Windows
XP Pro. One of them has a user account problem.

There are three user accounts: the administrator account is Exec,which
requires a password, and there are two limited user accounts (all and
child), which do not require a password. Recently, only the Exec account
appears at the Windows logon screen. Because of that, there is no way to
login to all or child, thus rendering this computer unusable to the
general public. Thinking that these two user accounts may have been
deleted somehow, I tried to create a new "all" user account, but Windows
told me that this account already exists.

I did some searching for this problem on the Microsoft web site and found
a fix that seemed to match my situation. The instructions for the fix
were to right click on My Computer, then click on Manage, then expand the
node "Users and Groups". After doing that, I should be able to see the
all and child user accounts and that they should be lined out in red
which indicates that they have been disabled. It goes on to say that I
can right click on each of them and then enable them. Well, when I follow
these instructions, all goes well up to the point where I get to Manage.
After getting into manage, there is no node for "Users and Groups".

Does anyone have any suggestions for restoring the two user accounts that
I have lost? Sorry for the long post.



First off, the fact that Local Users and Groups is not listed in Computer
Management would seem to indicate that this computer is running XP Home
Edition. You might want to check on that by going to Start -> Run and
entering lusrmgr.msc in the Open box. The Local Users and Groups snapin is
not available for the Microsoft Management Console in XP Home Edition.

As for the missing user accounts, see if you can log on by doing the
following.

At the Welcome screen, hit the Ctrl + Alt + Del keys twice to bring up the
Logon To Windows dialog. See if you can log into these missing accounts by
entering their names in the User Name box. If you're able to log on to the
accounts, go to Control Panel -> User Accounts. Click on the accounts icon
and look on the right hand side for their account status. I'm betting that
they are listed as a Guest account.

To recover those accounts, do the following;

Go to Start -> Run and enter cmd.exe in the Open box to launch a Command
Prompt window.
Enter the following command at the prompt.

net localgroup users /add all

After you hit the Enter key you should be told that the command completed
successfully.
Next, enter this command.

net localgroup users /add child

Hit Enter and you should see confirmation that the command completed
successfully.

Log off from the Exec account and see if you can log onto those accounts
from the Welcome screen.

Note: The situation you describe sounds as if someone logged on with the
Exec account and tried to make the all and child accounts members of the
Power Users group. That can't be done in Windows XP Home Edition.

Go to Start -> Run and enter control userpasswords2 in the Open box.
The alternate User Accounts applet will be launched.
On the Users page, click an entry in the list of user accounts so it's
highlighted.
Hit the Properties button.
In the account's properties ***, click on the Group Membership tab.
If you select Standard User (Power Users Group) and hit the OK button, an
error message will appear if the computer is running XP Home Edition.
Unfortunately, taking these actions will result in the account being
removed from the Users group and placed in the Guest group.
It will not appear on the Welcome screen or in the User Accounts applet in
Control Panel.
The account will only be visible at a command prompt using the net user
command.

Good luck

Nepatsfan



Nepatsfan, I worked on this computer a little today. First off I confirmed
that it is running Windows XP Home. Then I went to the Welcome screen and
hit Ctrl + Alt + Del twice to get the Windows Logon dialog. When entering
"all" I get this message: "Your account has been disabled. Please see your
system administrator". When entering "child" I get this message: "The system
could not log you on. Make sure your user name and domain are correct, then
type your password again. Letters in passwords must be typed using the
correct case". Well, there is no password set up for either of these users,
so the password should not be an issue. Anyway, as you can see I was unable
to login to all or child from the Windows Logon dialog.

I did not run the net localgroup users /add all -or- net localgroup users
/child commands because I understood your instructions to mean that those
commands should only be run if I was able to log in to all and child as
described in my paragraph immediately above. Let me know if I was wrong
about that and should indeed run the net localgroup users command.

I went to Start -> Run and ran control userpasswords2. Two users showed up.
They were Administrator and Exec.

When running net user at a command prompt these users are shown:
Administrator, all, child, exec, guest, and Helpassistant. It seems that all
and child are actually in the system but disabled. When I go to Control
Panel, User Accounts, the only user accounts that show up are Exec and
Guest.

Do you have any other ideas for re-enabling all and child? I was thinking
that maybe doing a system restore or reloading Windows XP may be needed.



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