Effect of deleting Administrator account in Win2K

[chess9]

I was helping a friend set up his networking in Win2K and we deleted the administrator account which he used to log on to his computer. He had another account which he sometimes used as well. At any rate, when the computer rebooted, he had a new administrator account but his *.pst files were gone! We searched for them on his hard drive, but to no avail. Why would deleting the Administrator account delete the *.pst files, or are they still there and we can't see them? Any ideas.

HELP!

And, thanks, as usual. 🙂

 

[igiveup]

You delete an account and anything related to that account goes bye bye. Better to disable an account. I hope your friends other account was an administrator level account. Or format, reinstall.

 

[chess9]

You mean even the *.pst files? Good grief, he's going to have a cow! So he must reinstall everything?

 

[chess9]

What about a file recovery utility?

 

[iamwiz82]

if you deleted it, then i assume his personal files went also. That is what happened, since they are in the profiles directory, under each profile.

 

[igiveup]

Well, I might be mistaken but the whole idea of deleting an account in win 2k is to get rid of it. Its not like the recycle bin though, where files are just changed. I don't think you can recover an account once its gone. Kinda violates a whole bunch of security features if you could do that. Sorry.

Trust me, format and reinstall is by far the easiest option. Too bad he didn't make an ERD (emergency repair disk), which stores a copy of the registry (has user accounts in it).

 

[chess9]

He guys, guess what? You can't delete the Administrator Account!!!!!! (per the Microsoft Knowledge data base) So, we didn't delete it, but still can't find the *.pst files.
By the way, he's using an OEM version and Microsoft wants $250 to give any phone advice. Anyone know someone who he can call at a reasonable hourly rate who really knows Win2K.

Thanks.

 

[GL]

I know that Norton Systemworks 2001 can do file recovery even if it was not installed during the mishap. I can't vouch for whether it will work but I know in the manual there are special installation procedures to undertake if you want to recover the files.

My advice is to just turn off the computer. You don't want the sectors that housed the .pst file to be overwritten by swapping or new files. Just leave it until you have a definitive answer.

-GL

 

[chess9]

GL: Thanks! I'll check the Norton website.