Viewing 22 posts - 1 through 22 (of 22 total)
  • IT help please – User Accounts in XP
  • RustyMac
    Full Member

    It boffins please may i call on your help again. I realise the last thing you want to do is probably resort to your day jobs out of hours but i am hoping to find someone who enjoys their job so much they don’t mind too much.

    I am trying to steam line the operation of my old laptop prior to creating some new back up disks.

    I have discovered there are a number of user accounts on my laptop (bought 2nd hand) in comparison to my netbook. Is there any easy way to remove the unwanted accounts and leave just 2 me as the admin and 1 guest?

    There is currently 2 other accounts visible when i put control userpasswords2 into the run comand – 1 Administrator, 2 ASPNET. I can not see the Adinistrator account when i go in through the control panel, is this normal? I am down as an admin but would like to know how i can remove these other 2 unwanted accounts please.

    Thanks for taking the time to read that.

    Rusty

    chojin
    Free Member

    They are normal accounts, i’d leave them.

    Besides, by removing them you’re not stream lining a thing, they are perfectly harmless.

    Cougar
    Full Member

    ‘s about the size of it.

    I’ll not get too techy, but they’re not ‘regular’ user accounts and are supposed to be there. Leave them alone.

    If you want help “streamlining”, we can probably advise if you explain what you’re trying to achieve. As a rule of thumb though, randomly removing things can cause big problems. (See also, registry “cleaners”)

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    RustyMac
    Full Member

    Ok chojin,

    Cheers for the reassurance there is nothing squiffy going on with the laptop. Just looked at the netbook again and the Administrator account is present on that one too, must have been more tired than i thought last night when i was looking at it, the joys of a new born i guess.

    If you know what is the ASP.NET account please? my laptop is the only computer in the house with it on.

    RustyMac
    Full Member

    I’m not so much randomly removing things just looking at the programs installed and getting rid of the tat that has accumulated over the years. i came across these and got wondering if these were also surplus to requirements.

    What i am looking to do is speed up the operation of the laptop a little, spec wise it should be quicker than the net book but that is not the case. I while back i asked about windows 8 and mentioned that i had installed more memory in the laptop to help speed it up and it had made no difference. The comments i got back were there must be a deeper problem, which i am now trying to resolve by removing tat, ensuring all updates are done and looking at the start up files. Is this a good start?

    I would like to be able to switch the laptop on and it go strait into the desktop without asking for me to select an account, is this possible with a number of accounts on the machine?

    [edit] that reads a little short/angry it is not meant to, sorry. I am a little tired just now [/edit]

    Cougar
    Full Member

    ASP.NET is a service account used by some applications. Whether it’s present or not will depend on what other software you have installed. It’s perfectly normal for it to either be there or not be there; however, if you remove it then any applications which depend on it will fail.

    i am now trying to resolve by removing tat, ensuring all updates are done and looking at the start up files. Is this a good start?

    Sure, with the caveat that if you don’t know what something is, it’s better to ask before you delete it than afterwards.

    I would like to be able to switch the laptop on and it go strait into the desktop without asking for me to select an account, is this possible with a number of accounts on the machine?

    Yeah, but I wouldn’t recommend it. If your laptop ever gets lost or stolen, you’d have no security in place to stop anyone getting access to your data (and cached passwords).

    If it’s XP Home rather than Pro you’ve not got a huge amount of security anyway, but you probably don’t want to make it too easy.

    Cougar
    Full Member

    As an aside, if it can wait till next week I could take a look at it remotely and advise if you like.

    RustyMac
    Full Member

    It can definitely wait till next week. In-fact that may be for the best, tiredness and frustration are not the greatest of mindsets to be in when trying to tidy up a computer. my email address is in my profile if you would like to get in contact with a time that is most convenient.

    Currently i do not have a password set on it, it is just a case of clicking the icon to get in. I was just looking to remove the additional step. The operating system is XP Home.

    Cougar
    Full Member

    It’s a tick box on the user account properties, “require username and password” or similar. I forget exactly where, I’ll have a look when I’m next near an XP machine.

    Ping me an email on Monday; if you leave it to me to contact you, I’ll forget as soon as this thread falls off the first page and it won’t happen.

    RustyMac
    Full Member

    Cheers Cougar,

    Will try to find time on Monday to email you. Will be my first day back after paternity leave so it may slip till later in the week till I find my feet and get into a rhythm with work and home. I’m in no major hurry to get it looked at so if when I email it is inconvieniet I am happy to try again at a later date.

    Thanks again,

    Rusty

    Trampus
    Free Member

    If you are an asp.net development worker then you must keep that account,otherwise your ASP.net projects will no longer function correctly. Deleting it will do no harm and achieve your aim of booting straight to desktop, provided you set no user account password.

    imnotamused
    Free Member

    Couple of ways to speed up the startup a bit…

    Reboot your machine and leave it alone for 5 mins so it settles down. Start, run, type eventvwr . Look at the system eventlog for anything with a red cross that occurred since the boot up time. Post back on here the detail as it might be possible to stop your pc from wasting time trying to start something that fails anyway.

    Start, run, msconfig . Choose the startup tab. Look through the list of services being run at startup and disable anything you know what it is but don’t want slowing the start of your pc down. For example, printer software often starts on boot so it doesnt have to spend time starting the first time you print. As with the above good advice though, there will be things in that list you don’t understand. Don’t disable them as they might be important. Post em up here tho so we can have a butchers.

    RustyMac
    Full Member

    Sorry for the slow reply, lat night was some what sleepless.

    Event viewer notes no errors in the last boot, there have been errors in the past but i guess these should now be rectified.

    msconfig – I had been into the start up items in CCleaner and removed some old programs like the various versions of windows messenger, had not thought about printer drivers etc as i didn’t know if that would mess things up or not.

    I can’t seem to get all the start up items in the small window that msconfig gives you or figure out to maximize/expand the window. I will try and upload a screen shot of the CCleaner page.

    RustyMac
    Full Member

    here is the screenshot, if you click on it you should be able to see it full size on Flickr.


    Laptop Startup by Rusty Mac, on Flickr

    skids
    Free Member

    I would clean install Windows on it. If it has other user accounts, then it no doubt has a load of other crap slowing it down

    oliverd1981
    Free Member

    I would clean install Windows on it. If it has other user accounts, then it no doubt has a load of other crap slowing it down

    with a streamlined SP3 disc if you can find one.

    Cougar
    Full Member

    You can pull the Adobe ARM entry, and the Assistant if you don’t use Distiller to create PDFs. The rest I’d probably leave.

    Not that it makes a great deal of difference, but I’d have uninstalled messenger rather than disabling it in startup. It’s under ‘Windows Components’ and you can safely remove it without affecting modern versions.

    I would clean install Windows on it. If it has other user accounts, then it no doubt has a load of other crap slowing it down

    Whilst a clean install isn’t inherently a bad idea, the “other user accounts” reasoning is false.

    with a streamlined SP3 disc if you can find one.

    Slipstreamed.

    RustyMac
    Full Member

    I had uninstalled messenger first however the start up items remained some how, i use Skype now and there was a heap of old versions in the start up so i got rid.

    A clean install would involve buying a new XP disk. Everything i have is on restore disks from 19oatcake. I was kind of hoping to create new up to date restore disks once i had the computer working properly so i don’t have to mess about with a million and one updates and removing various free and unwanted programs.

    Can you explain some more on this please “You can pull the Adobe ARM entry, and the Assistant if you don’t use Distiller to create PDFs.”

    I really get the create PDF bit. I create documents in open office then print/save them as PDF for distribution, I will occasionally use adobe to put watermarks in the documents.

    molgrips
    Free Member

    I’d remove Skype if you can – it’s a resource hog and is bloody annoying. I much prefer facebook video chat or google talk video chat.

    RustyMac
    Full Member

    Sorry molly,

    Skype is a must have, we have family in other countries that all use it. Whilst there may be other better programs out there the hassle of getting everyone to swap out weights the benefits. Cheers for looking in on a boring IT thread though.

    molgrips
    Free Member

    Don’t apologise – I did say ‘if you can’ 🙂

    It’s often installed automatically when you install other things.

    ChristoGinger
    Free Member

    Start ^ run type msconfig. Go to startup tab and untick most of the crap in there

Viewing 22 posts - 1 through 22 (of 22 total)

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