Re: User Accounts not Appearing on Welcome Screen


"Nepatsfan" <nepatsfan@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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"Ken Triebold" <iebold@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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"Nepatsfan" <nepatsfan@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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"Ken Triebold" <iebold@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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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.





While logged on with the Exec account, open a command prompt window and
enter the following command.

net user all /active:yes

You should get a response that the command completed successfully.
This should enable the all account.

Next, enter the following at the command prompt and hit enter.

net user all

You should see information about the all account displayed. You should see
Yes next to Account active and Never next to Account expires. Next, check
the entries next to Local Group Memberships. The Users group should be
listed there. If it isn't, enter the following command.

net localgroup users /add all

See if you can now log on to the all account. If you can, log back on to
the Exec account and use the same procedure for the child account. Simply
change the commands by substituting child for all as in net user child
/active:yes. Once again, check the group membership by running the net
user child command. Add the account to the Users group if it's not listed,
net localgroup users /add child.

If you find that the child account was disabled but now requires a
password, go to Control Panel -> User Accounts while logged on with the
Exec account. The child icon should now be displayed. Click on it and
select Remove the Password on the next screen. Ignore the warning message
and hit the Remove Password button. See if you can now log on with the
child account.

Keep me posted if you run into any problems.

Note: If you're still unable to access these account, I'd suggest creating
new limited user accounts with different names in place of child and all
before reinstalling XP. I can understand that the library might want to
retain uniformity on their computers by using the same account names on
all four machines, but reinstalling the operating system and applications
is a lot of work.

Good luck

Nepatsfan


Thanks Nepatsfan. I'll give it a try. I like the way your instructions are
clear and easy to understand.

-Ken


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