Are shared documents and files removed from PC if one account deleted?

Due to a series of previous problems involving profiles/accounts, I now have my documents, photos, and music and video files in three different places:

• Documents and Settings
• C:\Users\Person A
• C:\Users\Person B.

If I now get rid of one of the two user profiles/accounts (both are Administrators), do I risk losing all of my documents and files?

Florio

Thanks for replying, Brink. :)

My files are saved in both user accounts as well as in Documents and Settings, so I should be pretty safe if I delete one of the user accounts. I do have back up on a separate hard drive, but I'd prefer not to have to reinstall everything again.

Florio

Hi Brink.

First of all, happy New Year.

Yesterday I deleted the account C:\Users\Person A. Towards the end of the deletion process I was told that a couple of the files I wanted to eliminate were system files and it was better not to touch them. So I didn't. This meant that the account was not completely removed from my computer or from File Explorer. To keep things tidy, I 'hid' the name of that account.

Everything seemed to be running perfectly until I had the brilliant idea of changing the name of the remaining user profile (Person B). I followed your tutorials on changing the name and of enabling an elevated Administrator account (all very simple and straight forward), but when I got to the part of renaming the profile in File Explorer, I ran into problems: the new name I'd chosen was the same as that of the account I'd (incompletely) deleted and then hidden (C:\Users\Person A). I hadn't taken into account the fact that there was an account with that name, albeit hidden, on my computer.

I was asked if I wanted to substitute the old account with the new one, and I clicked on yes. I noticed that files like AppData were being trasferred. So I stopped the substitution. I 'unhid' the old Person A account and saw that my documents had already been moved across to it. I moved them back to Person B. I then went back and restored the original user profle name for Person B.

Anyway, the upshot of all of this is that now I cannot access my account (Person B). I get a message saying:
“We can’t sign into your account.This problem can often be fixed by signing out of your account and then signing back in. If you don’t sign out now, any files you create or changes you make will be lost.”

I've seen a couple of webpages that offer solutions to this problem, but I wanted to ask your advice. Hope you can lend me a hand.

Cheers,

Florio

Thanks for your reply, Brink.

I'm just a little confused as to which account is the temporary one, as I don't actually receive a message saying "You've been signed in with a temporary account'" (only the “We can’t sign into your account.This problem can often be fixed by signing out of your account and then signing back in. If you don’t sign out now, any files you create or changes you make will be lost.”

Is the elevated Administrator account temporary? That's the one that comes on when I run the command prompt. Obviously it is the other account that I cannot get into.

Florio

No joy, I'm afraid. I did remove the .bak extension, but I still cannot access my account. I don't really understand what's going on here, and am starting to panic! Do you have any other suggestions?

NavyLCDR posted a reply to my query at can no longer access my Windows 10 account... - Windows 10 Forums. What do you think?

I have already enabled the built-in elevated Administrator, but not at Boot, but the computer does boot up okay, and I get to see the log-in screen.

Florio

Yes, I followed your instructions to the letter, Brink. That's why I was finding it difficult to understand what was going on.

Anyway, I've just started creating another new profile according to NavyLCDR's guidelines. So far so good, but I'm getting bogged down in personalising things like my email account with Outlook and browser favourites etc.

Florio