...prepare Wife's old Dell Inspiron laptop for liquidation.  

post a screenshot of the regedit window under
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

Have you tried this:

Open a PowerShell or CMD window as an Admin
Type attrib -s -h c:\users\ANON
Press the Enter key

?

Just make another user and profile and call it ANON2 or whatever.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...ion=Windows_10

And give ANON2 or whatever adm.rigths.

- - - Updated - - -

This for quality-control in Project "Make another User" in Windows 10. Also it could be helpful for control of potential existing user accounts.


Check if the new user is not disabled
1-Right-click on Start then click on Windows PowerShell(admin)
2-Type this command and press enter to show all users:
Get-LocalUser

3-Check the new user option "Enabled", if is set to "False" run this command to enable it.
net user New_username /active:yes
4-Reboot your PC.

Enable the user switching mode in the Registry editor.
1-Right-click on Start then click on Run
2-Type: Regedit and click on Ok
3-Go to the key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Authentication\LogonUI\UserSwitch
4-Double click on the option "Enabled" on the right-side
5-Change the value to 1 and click on Ok to save the change
6-Close the registry editor and reboot your PC

- - - Updated - - -

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...3-e743bb8cdb56

By the way, another fellow with nearly same problem.
And they sorted it out....after some work.

I am logged on, using the new local account, and have not used the MS account since making the new local account.
I have logged in & out of the new local account at least 10 times.

hapEcat said:

the entries c:\users\hapec\ should say %userprofile%\

dble click on each value that says c:\users\hapec and change it to %userprofile%