Lost Admin Account

XP SP2, after I changed the 'prompt for password on resume' in power options to off, I lost my admin account upon reboot. I then went into safe mode to re-create it, maybe a stupid thing, under the same name and as a pass worded administrator. I can easily rebuild it as this install is only 2 months old and my info is backed up. I also lost some 500MB from my C drive if that helps and after looking, I have no idea of where it went.

My main questions are I guess, is can I find where the old profile is and restore it, and mainly why did it happen in the first place? Or just chalk this up to the demonic electrons in my machine.

 

Demonic electrons rule!

Anyway,

Profiles are designed to be disposable without screwing the OS. So when they corrupt, they corrupt and die. Hence, its a good idea not to use the system provided admin account.

That said, your profile files are most likely still there, under C:\Documents and Settings. There will be the original "Administrator" and the new Administrator.computername. The original is the one in question, and "should" have your data in it.

 

Main reason I wanted to restore the profile was to have everything back up and all previously installed programs running but that ain't gonna happen eh? I found the docs/sets info for the admin acct. with 1.3 GB of temp info so I'll get back the space that I lost. I have started to use a 'power user' acct. to increase security though I'm not sure how good that is, I need to do some research. Thanks Adryn.

 

Quite welcome

usually programs installed in one profile, work in another...is it just the start menu items missing? You can drill down on that dead admin account and extract those missing shortcuts.

 

Only about 8 programs are left of the some 25 I had, one important one that is AWOL was MozBackup, but I found an old FF2 HTML file that I had and imported it and looks good except for the fact that none of the folders appear when I want to add a bookmark. I'll fool around some more to see if I can get them back.

I haven't deleted the old profile yet in hopes of recovering some more stuff so's here's hoping but I doubt it as most of it is temp files and I've already gone through several folders and not finding much.

EDIT: I don't have an issue with Start menu items, just the rest.