[boots789]

I was given an old PC that used to be part of a college network. It is running Windows XP Professional SP2. I noticed that there were a TON of old user profiles saved in the documents and settings folder that are taking up a good chunk of disk space. I did a little research and found instructions on how to delete these profiles.

I logged in as administrator, opened system properties, clicked on the advanced tab, then clicked on "Settings" under "User Profiles". This then brought up the list of user profiles. They were all listed as "account unknown". I attempted to delete them, but the "delete" and "copy to" buttons are grayed out.

I also opened "user accounts" in the control panel, but none of them were listed there.

I've done a fair amount of reading on the web about this problem and haven't been able to find a solution.

Could anyone shed some light on this?

Thank you,

Sean

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Hello Sean,

It sounds like XP was installed over the top of XP one or more times. If the accounts are not listed in user accounts it should be alright to take ownership of the account folders and delete them to get the space back. Try this.

[shinybeast]

Hello Sean,

It sounds like XP was installed over the top of XP one or more times. If the accounts are not listed in user accounts it should be alright to take ownership of the account folders and delete them to get the space back. Try this.

[boots789]

Problem solved. After taking ownership of the files, I was able to delete them. Thank you for your help!