How does one delete one's own "User Account" in Windows XP?

[Boojatta]

What are the consequences of doing it? Do any folders get deleted? In the desktop of the User Account that is removed, do all the files get deleted?

If you know how to delete your own User Account, then how did you find out?

[trotsky]

1. There are user accounts and user profiles.

Deleting one will not delete the other. The account is what you enter to log in. The profile is your collection of desktop settings, IE favorites, "My Documents," etc.

So are you talking about deleting an account, or deleting a profile? Or both?

[Boojatta]

2. Both.

I presume that one can save somewhere any files or settings that would be deleted. Then one would have them in case they are convenient to have in future. However, I don't know which files or settings would be deleted. I also don't know how to change things so that after booting up there is only one User Account that shows up on the desktop.

[trotsky]

3. The profiles/settings are saved in

C:\Documents and Settings\

There is a folder in there for each user. So you could just copy that whole folder, burn it to a CD, whatever. However IE stores its temp files within that folder so you could have a LOT of junk that you don't certainly don't need to copy. You should go into IE one last time as that user and delete temp files, history, cookies, etc.

Then just go to Control Panel -> User Accounts and delete the user account you no longer want. You will be able to do this as long as your sole remaining account has Administrator permissions.

Once you've deleted that account, you won't see it on the XP startup page.

[Gore1FL]

4. Use delprof.exe to kill the profile

and then go to control panel and delete the id through user accounts.

I forgot where to get delprof.exe off hand, but do a google search.

[Gore1FL]

5. delprof page link

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=901a9b95-6063-4462-8150-360394e98e1e&displaylang=en