restoring deleted user profiles

HELP please!

Today, i foolishly deleted all but one user profile on my aunties windows 98 computer. I have since emptied out the recycle bin and clean up the computer best i can.

Can someone please tell me the method to restore the profiles??? I have already searched windows explorer, i know the files are still their and have just be renamed so that they cant be seen. Help!!!

Thanks
Matt

 

Have you checked in Control Panel > Passwords > Password Properties > User Profiles (tab)? Threre is a radio button for "All users of this computer use the same preferences..." or "Users can customise their preferences.... "

Matt

 

yea seen that, however i have completely deleted the profile, so now there is only one profile on the computer that can be seen, instead of the original 2

 

I was hoping that someone else may have have spotted a fix and jumped in to help us out (hint,hint )

Have you deleted the .pwl file for the second user? (.pwl files are the only ones I know that carry the User information)

If you think that you have deleted the wrong file, do not Defragment the drive. The file will still be there, but Windows has removed it from it's index. Defragmenting the drive will overwrite the "invisible" file.

If you have deleted that file, I can only suggest to find a (free) file recovery program. I checked www.zdnet.com (go to
ZDNet > Downloads > Windows > Utilities > File & Disk Management...then....sort by free licence) and found two "possibles" (there were quite a few that were not free). You could also check www.cnet.com , www.majorgeeks.com and www.tucows.com.

If you have any utilities, they may have a "file undelete ". I'm pretty sure my Norton Utilities has one.

Matt