Windows 10: Local Account user appears and will not delete

I received an email from Eset security that a 'phantom' account was created and when I logged on my computer I see an account user named JQ was created and I have deleted it several times and it keeps coming back. Can you please assist as I am afraid my computer is under attack.

:)

 

How to delete local user accounts on Windows 10?

Hi Marvin,

Thank you for posting in Microsoft Community and being a part of Windows 10.

I understand your concern about delete the multiple user accounts on your device. We will help you with this issue.

Try few of the below troubleshooting steps to delete local user account and check if it helps.

Note: When you want to delete a user account from your computer:

• 
  You must be signed in as an administrator to be able to delete a user account.
  
• 
  You will not be able to delete a user account that is currently signed in. You will need to sign out the user first.
  
• 
  Be sure to always have at least one enabled administrator account on the PC to avoid not being able to perform actions that require administrator rights.
  

Step 1: Steps to Remove a User Account in Settings

• 
  Press Windows
  key, click on Settings.
  
• 
  Click on Account, click on
  Family and other users.
  
• 
  Select the user you want to delete under
  Other users and click on Remove.
  
• 
  Accept the UAC (User Account Control) prompt.
  
• 
  Select Delete account and data if you wish to delete account and the data and follow onscreen instructions.
  

OR

Step 2: Steps to Delete a User Account in Command Prompt

• 
  Press Windows + X keys from the keyboard, select
  Command Prompt (Admin).
  
• 
  Type net user and hit Enter
  to list the user accounts on your device.
  
• 
  Type net user "User account
  " /delete and hit Enter to delete the user account.
  

Hope it helps. Reply to the post with an updated status of this issue for further assistance.

 

Local Acct user and MS account user - sync them or merge them


If the local account is the one where you have most of your personal data, this is how I would do it:

• Sign in to your Microsoft account
  
• Copy all documents, pictures and other personal data from Microsoft account's user folders to corresponding folders in user Public (contents of MS account Documents folder to Public Documents folder and so on)
• Sign out from Microsoft account

Notice that above steps are only required if Microsoft account user folders contain data you want to keep. If its user folders are empty or do not contain anything worth saving, you can skip the above steps. Continue from below.

• Sign in to the local account
  
• Delete the Microsoft account (Option One in this tutorial)
• Switch your local account to a Microsoft account (tutorial)
• Copy the data backed up from old Microsoft account to Public folders to new Microsoft account in corresponding folders

That's it. Using the Public folders as temporary storage you will have none whatsoever file owner / permission issues later on.

 

Deleting User Accounts

If you can access the admin account through safe mode then all you have to do to remove the other account passwords is go into User Accounts in the control panel and either delete the accounts or, I'm not sure, remove the account passwords.