Vista User Accounts Want to Merge

I have finally realized why I'm having so much trouble with Vista when my kids seem to have none. I followed the directions and set up an Admin account, my admin user account, and a guest account. What has become painfully at issue is whenever I have updated my software, I did it all from my normal user account and before long, my system began becoming unstable. When I called the manufacturer to try to recapture some of my damaged drivers, they told me the only thing I could do was totally reformat.

What a disaster. I had previously purchased a Memorex external DVD RW which only works with Nero. Not realizing this was an issue, I backed up my computer and smartly put some of my critical files on an external HDD which I had from when my previous computer began systematically breaking down....still haven't recovered fully from that and now I'm battling Vista to boot (sorry about the bad pun).

I did as HP told me and re-imaged my C: drive and started over. Now I must add to complicate things, we have a cable network connection, but my computer was linked via wireless with a repeater to get the signal to my computer (cable company said we could not move it to a more central location...yeah right). Because my kids computers are near to the incoming I/net and having little regard for safe surfing, they recently got us all infected by the vundo worm. My oldest learned some time ago when he had trouble with the wireless that the router had this nice little reset button that when he pushed it, he could quickly reconfigure and well heck, who cares about Mom? So I would be working on something and boom! I'm off, don't know why and I'm changing settings with no idea that no. 1 son has reset the router. After losing several more weeks of my life, I begged my DH and was able to get my own private connection. Expensive, but as long as I have teens in the house, I don't want to lose any more of my life fixing computers.

I got my system cleaned up, an interim firewall set up and was slowly regaining my files. I tried to restore my backup and none of my disk drives will work for me. What's up with that? After a lot of research and investigating, I come to find out that Vista had set the usage of those devices as only for the Admin account. I go and change them to shared and finally am able to use them again. This what leads me to begin looking and realizing that since I am not the main admin, I have been updating my drivers and not for the entire computer as I believed. As I consider it, I realize that my no 1 son who is also running Vista has no problems and can't understand why I do. Well, duh! I followed directions and he didn't.

Now, I decided to try to copy my account files over to the Admin so I can get rid of my user account and I believe that I may have things really messed up. So now comes the question: Can I cleanly combine the two accounts so I don't lose all of my email files and documents, yet be the main admin? Is there an easy tool to do this? I will do no more until I hear from you.

You guys have saved my bacon on more than one occasion! You are the best! Thanks!

 

Hey, I have looked through similar threads and have not found an answer to my question. I try to solve my issue from previous posts, but this just doesn't seem to be on the radar. If you have a post to point me to, please, tell me where to look.

I have learned so much from this site, but this one is got me stumped. Help me please! I have lost way too many hours/days of my life from this god forsaken OS. I only got it because they didn't offer another OS and I got what I could afford after my Dell (only 3 yr old) suffered from a systematic and complete failure of multiple components.

:cry :confused :banghead