[ccryder]

As the old saying goes, "No good deed goes unpunished." I was over to a friend's house and he asked me to help him set up a separate account on his PC running Microsoft XP. He told me that he had one account that everyone in the house uses. He wanted a separate account for himself so he can have his own iTunes music that only he can get access to (He listens to some explicit music). In an attempt to be helpful, I went into the Control Panel and added an account that I named after my friend "Fred's Account". I made this account the "administrator account" and switched his other account to "limited" and renamed it as "Kids". I then went back to the sign-in window and clicked on "Fred's Account." A window popped up that read "Loading your personal settings" for several seconds and and then a smaller pop-up that read "Setting up your personalized settings for Internet Explorer" came up and remained on the screen for a long, long, long time. After waiting and waiting, nothing seemed to happen. The "setting up your personalized settings.." window remained there. I restarted the computer and was able to get back into the "Kids" account with access to all things (Itunes and IE), however, "Fred's Account" does not get me "anywhere." Also, since I cannot get into Fred's account, I cannot return the original account to "Administrator" status. What did I do wrong and how can I correct the screw up. Thanks.

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Boot to Safe Mode (press F8 during early boot), login as Administrator, no password. Open User Accounts in Control Panel and change the Kids account to Administrator.

Were I you, once you did that then did a normal boot to verify all is well, I would delete the account you created then reboot one more time to make sure all is well.

Next, create another new Administrator level account and try it again before removing Administrator from the Kids account. Shutdown and reboot one more time and login as the new account. If okay then follow directions here to copy data from the Kids account to the new account http://support.micro...om/?kbid=811151.

Once that's done and you can successfully login to the new account, change the Kids account to restricted and you should be all set.

[Ztruker]

Boot to Safe Mode (press F8 during early boot), login as Administrator, no password. Open User Accounts in Control Panel and change the Kids account to Administrator.

Were I you, once you did that then did a normal boot to verify all is well, I would delete the account you created then reboot one more time to make sure all is well.

Next, create another new Administrator level account and try it again before removing Administrator from the Kids account. Shutdown and reboot one more time and login as the new account. If okay then follow directions here to copy data from the Kids account to the new account http://support.micro...om/?kbid=811151.

Once that's done and you can successfully login to the new account, change the Kids account to restricted and you should be all set.