XP Home Edition User Accounts

A friend brought me their older Dell desktop with Windows XP Home on it. First boot showed me accounts for all four members of the household, but no Admin or Guest accounts... They want me to eliminate any of their personal info so they can give the thing to someone else. I backed up their documents and deleted all the user accounts in Documents & Settings; they still come up... went into RegEdit and removed them all hoping the Owner account would be the default... they don't go away. I tried going into the control panel > User Accounts... it has a little icon for home and a left and right arrow in the top of the screen... nothing else on the page. I just want to clear this thing so I can give it back. In fact, if I could default it, without reinstall of the OS, to no user account... it just boots to the default desktop... I'd be done. Any help? Thanx.

L

 

If I'm getting rid of a computer and passing it on I wipe the HD. Files can still be pulled off a HD after deletion. I would reload XP via the disks that came with it and perform a standard format when prompted. Updates will be a PITA but if your not under the gun to get it fixed why not?

 

Yeah, that would be ideal but this thing has become like cellophane toilet paper... (wait for the image to sink in)...

The rub is, they don't know where the restore disks are... if it were ME or the like, I would just install one of the copies I have and be done with it, but with XP I can't do that. So I'm screwed. I told them without the restore disks, I could only remove the apparent stuff... Thanx for the suggestion, but in this case, how would you proceed?

 

Suprising how many people 'find' the recovery disks when faced with the possibility of buying a new one.

 

If you Go to Start, Run and type in "control userpasswords2" [no quotes] do you get a list of users there? If so try removing the unwanted ones.

 

Since they are giving the machine away, there is little incentive... I'll just give it back to them and say I've gotten rid of what I can. That'll have to do.

Thanx
L