Windows Vista User Account Restore Question

Factual Questions
1

I’m running Vista Home Premium and I ran into a strange issue about a week ago.

Short version:
I want to delete my main administrator account on my PC and re-add it, hopefully with all my settings and such still in-tact. I do have a second administrator account setup at this point.

Longer version:

My main administrator account suddenly couldn’t open outlook 2010 anymore. It had worked just fine a few days prior, but suddenly I was getting an error “Cannot start Microsoft Outlook. Cannot open the Outlook window.” After doing some research, I’ve done the following:

  1. Run outlook.exe /resetnavpane through the run command
  2. Scanned for viruses using Norton and spybot
  3. Restored to a restore point prior to the issue first appearing
  4. Safe mode
  5. Changed the user to a standard user and then back to administrator
  6. Turned UAC on and off on the account in question
  7. Created a second profile in outlook
  8. Tried to “repair” outlook
  9. Tried to uninstall and re-install outlook
  10. Finally, I used a different user account and outlooks works fine on that account.

Other strangeness I noticed is that the account with problems:

  1. I can’t re-name folders
  2. Word 2010 also gives an error on startup but it does eventually start
  3. Openoffice won’t start

In short, it looks like the problem account, while an administrator, isn’t really setup properly somehow. I’m hoping deleting it and re-adding it will fix things, but I have this configured on that account that I would prefer not to have to completely setup again.

I do have regular backups and I backed up the C:\users<account_name> manually last night.

Any Vista advice??

2

You might try the method that works for XP. Copy all the data other than the .dat files into your new account folder. Log out of the admin account, and log into the other account, and fix any cosmetic differences. Check your programs. IF it works, then delete the old account.

3

You cannot delete the in-built administrator account.

Have you tried running Outlook in Safe Mode (outlook.exe /safemode)? Note that this is distinct from Windows Safe Mode.

4

I have tried running outlook in safe mode, but it just didn’t start.

I’ve created a second administrator account and I copied everything from the c:\users\owner folder to the new administrator. So far most things are doing okay. I still have more setup work to do, though.

A very strange error.

5

If you create a new account with the same name as a deleted account, it is not the same account. Each account, as created, is given a SID (Security ID). no matter what name you stick on it, if the SID is different, it’s a different account.