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Administrator accounts

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Hi

We have a Server running Windows 2000 Server, with Small Business Server 2000 installed over the top. The server is a domain controller, running a single domain AD site.

I need to free some space on the C: drive and was looking at the Documents and settings folder. This contains folders named ADMIN~1~001, 002 and 004. Also, folders named Administrator, Administrator.HTL-SERVER, Administrator.HTL-SERVER.000 to 004. It also has All Users, All Users.WINDOWS and all Users.WINNT. Also, Default User, Default User.WINDOWS and Default User.WINNT

When we first got the server it took us several installs before we got it right! Presumably these accounts reflect that. I would like to know if it is safe to delete all the Administrator accounts except the 004 account (the most recent)?

and

Can anyone tell me what the differently named accounts mean (.WINDOWS and .WINNT)?

Many thanks

10 replies

by tamj123

Login as admin. then right click on my computer\properties\user profiles\, you should able to delete all the profiles excepted the one you currentlly login. don't just delete from documents and settings folder.

hope this help

by cp7212

I was just browsing through one of my PC mags yesterday and saw an article about this. I'll post tomorrow to let you know if I saw anything to help you.

by cp7212

It seems that there is plenty of info in here for you. I'll check back later.

by razz2

Tamj123 nailed it. They are user profiles that were created during a login at some time. In the user profiles tgab you will not be allowed to delete the current profile, so delete anything else you do not want. I doubt it will get you that much in comparison to the whole drive, but it will free some.

Good Luck,

razz

by blackcurrant

Hi razz2, Tamj1213's answer was on the right track, and after I delete these I'll have an extra 100MBish freed up, which as you correctly surmised is not much in comparison to the whole drive, but it will place the free space back over the safety threshold. Thanks for your response

by d'solve it

Hi,

Both Tamj123 and Razz are correct; only some of these profiles may not show up since they are 'dead' profiles from previous installations.

The 'HTL-SERVER' tag is your server name. From the above, I can make out that it took you 5 installs to get it right :-)

Administrator.HTL-SERVER.nnnn are accounts created with the same name at each install. So to distinguich each account (instead of overwriting the old one, a new account with a numbered extension was created. This is because while doing a fresh install, you did not reformat the system partition (C drive by default).

The same happened during install - you propably changed the default windows directory. The default windows directory (for Win2K) is c:\winnt unless you change it to a different location.

Login as administrator (domain) and open a command window and type SET. Near the bottom of the screen (generally the last line) you'll see a line like this:

...
USERNAME=Administrator
USERPROFILE=C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator
windir=C:\WINDOWS

The last line tells you the active windows folder (in this case C:\WINDOWS. You could delete any folder named C:\WINNT or C:\WINDOWS001 etc. Just MAKE SURE that no programs refer to these folders anymore. You could also delete the Default User.xxx where xxx is not active.

Similarly, the second last line tells you where the active administrator profile is located. (REMEMBER, you will have one administrator account that was created before you ran Active Directory, DO NOT DELETE THAT ACCOUNT!!!) You can delete the other Administrator.HT....nnn folders that are not active.

My suggestion would be to do a clean install to get everything correct. Moreover, as you mention you need space on drive C, I would strongly recommend you to do so. This time allocate enough space for C.

:-)

Good Luck

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