[Jayce]

So somebody called me in need of computer help, I go over.

Turns out they have upwards of 1,000 spyware and 3 trojans, along with 9 toolbars installed and a ton of bogus bloatware programs.

So I take care of all of that...

There were 3 accounts set up on Vista. Amber was set as admin. Bob and Shirley were just standard accounts. Amber's friend came over, messed with it, and somehow Shirley got deleted and Bob was left acting weird. You see Bob's icon at the login screen, but if you click on it, nothing happens. Eventually, after about 10 minutes, it'll get to a blue screen with a white old school looking cursor. It reminded me of Windows 2k Pro.

I deleted Bob, re-created Bob and Shirley, and even still I can't log in to either. Yet, Amber works fine. But no matter what I do I can't create additional accounts that work.

I have no idea what this kid did, and it's like a fued between Amber and her ex-friend to figure out what he messed with, so calling the kid to figure it out is out of the question.

However, Amber's account runs like a top now that she's got the additional toolbars and trojans out of the system. But what's causing the eff-up with the other two accounts?

[Luke]

re install the os, he prob deleted some files that were part of windows or corrupted something.

[Jayce]

I REALLY don't want to do that...

Is there any way to possibly work around that??

[Luke]

you could try a repair install, that MIGHT work.

[Saxon]

Mak will have a beter idea than me but:

Try a reapre install but back the data up first, the only time i saw anything like this was when UAC had a brain fart an i could only access a admin account if you tried to access any other one it came up with some error saying "UAC XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX" X = long forgoten error code. the only way to fix it was a repare install.

[carnageX]

I don't think you can do a repair install on Vista... If I remember right, you don't have that option, you'd have to do a clean format.

[Mak213]

Hello,

There is no repair option for Vista. At all. The profiles are corrupted. There is something that is missing fromteh profile accounts that is needed to make them work properly.

How to recover the damaged user profile in Windows XP

Check out that page. It talks of how to fix a corrupted user profile. But if creating a new profile is still corrupt then you don have much choice but to format and reinstall with Vista.

Cheers,
Mak

[Jayce]

Man, that's so weird. And to think one of her little buddies who was over did it. I wonder what in the world he changed.

It was definitely weird to me to see a freshly created account unable to log in to that account. On the upside, the primary account is still functional... but it's a bummer the rest are problematic.

I'll talk to them and see what they want to do. I have a feeling they may just keep trucking along with 1 account as-is and if something else comes up that suggests reinstalling, then they may take it. We'll see what happens, though.

[forrestcupp]

I think I'd try a System Restore before formatting the drive and reinstalling. It may not work, but it's worth a shot; it doesn't really take that long. If it does work, it would save you a lot of time and effort.

[Jayce]

Yeah, but this happened back in last October... they just tolerated 1 account up until now, and when the computer started having other issues and they called me, they brought up the account issue. The computer was bought brand new a month earlier... Do you really think a system restore back to Halloween of 07 is a viable solution?