old user account directories

I recently had to reload XP. When I went back into the system I found my old account directory under "c:\Documents and Settings ". this account was protected with a password and I can't find a way to supply the password to get into this directory. any atempt to cd into this directory is met with the error "DENIED ".

 

Thanks for the info. I was able to get what i need out of the accout.
I also found that if you create an account with the same name the system will reset up the account and will you to use the account mgr system to clean it up

 

The OS pays almost no attention to the account 'name'. When you create an account, a new SID (security ID - the long, ugly string of meaningless numbers) is assigned to the account and that is what the OS uses.

So if you have a user account George, delete it, create a new one with the name George, they look the same to you but not to your OS.

Not sure about XP-home but with XP-pro you can easily see this in action.

- create a folder
- grant permission to that folder to an account you don't need (George for example).
- take a look at the folder security and you will see George as having access.
- delete George and create a new George
- check the security for the folder and you will see a user having access but the user name is a string of numbers. It's the SID of the deleted account and is useless but still hangs around.
- George (the new account) will not have access unless you add it.

 

Well... I have the following problem. the old accounts no longer show up when you trying to login. This means that I can't supply the password to enter the protected account. I can take ownership to get at contence but can't remove the account.

How does XP manage accouts and is there another way to get at this account. From this point I need to get XP to Reconize this account such that the system will let me remove it.

 

- Log in as an administrator (either the administrator account or another one with admin rights)

- Right-click on My Computer, left-click on Manage, go into the Users section and remove any accounts you wish. Note that is is a very bad idea to remove the system-entered accounts like Administrator, Guest although you can rename them if you wish.

- At the same time, if you wish, you can also remove the folder from Documents and Settings that matches the user account you removed.

You don't specify XP-pro or XP-home so I need to say that you can do this from a normal login to XP-pro but I can't say for sure about XP-home as it may require you to be in safe mode for this particular sort of manipulation.