Windows 10: My admin account switched to a user account!

Raner,

You can reinstall onto the required drive without affecting the contents of any of the other drives even without disconnecting anything. Having said that, whilst I do not know what you have on each drive, I should point out that complications can arise if you install without them being connected throughout [I am thinking here about other drives containing the OSs of a multi-boot system but there are probably other examples]. I would still not contemplate a reinstallation without backing up everything whichever drive it was on - it is just that, in practice, I have had no problems.

You can back up your own files from the C:\ drive. I think you should relocate your "user folders" [C:\Users\YourUserName\Documents etc] when you have reinstalled. I have written a procedure for this in Relocating user folders in Windows 7 and Windows 10. {As for the problems you are having with access rejections in the Public folders, Public folders are owned by the System [which outranks the permissions of Admin accounts] so they can be a problem}.

 

[continued]

I do not know why you are using the Public folders but they can also be relocated afterwards using the same procedure. The relevant Registry key for the Public folders is
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell
Folders
but you should only be interested in that information if you have some need to use Public folders. Using the other drives you have can achieve anything that Public folders could do.

Given the existence of your other drives, you might wish to keep everything you can on the other drives so that your system images are small [so that you can make images more frequently & keep several recent ones to restore from if serious problems emerge].

Since you have never enabled the Built-In Admin I do not know why its properties [net user administrator] showed a fullname entry. But this will no longer matter if you do a clean installation.

You do realise that Admin accounts do get Admin prompts? Admin accounts are logged in with only standard user account "tokens" and the Admin challenge you get is your chance to say that you wish to invoke your Admin status for the given task.

It is possible that you have severe user profile corruption and it is responsible for shortcuts being saved to an inappropriate location [the Public folder]. When applications install shortcuts on my computers, they put them in my user accounts Desktop folder in general and only a few put them in the Public folders. Again, reinstallation should put an end to these problems.

Reinstallation will overwrite the whole of the Windows drive so your personal files on that drive will get destroyed. There is nothing to cause any backed up then put back data files to have problems. Having said that you will probably be putting them back into the drives-folders you have chosen to relocate to rather than the Windows drive.

All applications will need to be reinstalled after Windows is reinstalled.

The permissions your user account has are sufficient for everything you need to do. Approving the Admin challenge is intended to be enough for all special tasks. There is no easy definition of "full control" for me to respond about but there is absolutely no reason to think that anything abnormal is useful.

I think I have responded to each of your points but just say if I have missed anything.

You can make your installation disk using http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/w...n-tool-install [you will need an 8GB USB but DVD-R can be used instead if you really want to use something breakable].

Best of luck,
Denis

 

Raner,

I did miss one thing.

As you reinstall, you will be asked to create a user account. Make sure you choose the option that you do not have its login data so that it allows you to create a local account rather than an MSAccount-linked one.

As soon as installation is complete create one or two additional password-protected local Admin accounts & write their passwords down somewhere secure - I use one of these accounts for troubleshooting and the second remains in reserve on the basis that if it is never actually used it can never be corrupted.

Only when that has been done should you consider converting your day-to-day account into an MSAccount-linked one. My day-to-day user account is a local one and I created an additional account to convert into an MSAccount-linked one [I doubt that I have even logged into it for two months but I try to do so every 60 days so I can update Windows 10 Apps or they start to throw wobblies].

Denis

 

Denis, Thanks again for your time...That was a along comeback.
Reading your (how too) on moving user folders to another location got me to thinking,
That can be a very dangerous thing.
I want to try something, See if you can help me out maybe it will save me a reinstall, anyway it's worth a shot.
Ok, here I go...
I have no need for a user public folder. Because I'm the only person that uses this computer.
Can you tell me how to stop windows 10 from pointing anything to the users/Public/folder, And point everything to users/Garica-1/folder.
(In other words, make it so windows 10 does not know that folder ever existed)
The reasoning for my thinking is that I'm having not one single issue with the files in users/Garcia-1,
The problem is coming from the files in the users/Public/folder.
I think this will solve my problem, Well it's kinda a patch repair but if it works who cars...LOL...Thanks RRG...

 

Raner,

You can use the relocation procedure I gave you a link to but based on the Public folders Registry key
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders
to relocate the Public folders to folders of your own choosing. If I was to try this I would make sure I had made a system image first and had backed up my data files because I have never seen anybody report that they had done this [even though there is nothing at all, on the face of it, to make this difficult].

I am still puzzled about why you are not using one of your many other hard drives for the user folders for your user account. Unless, of course, you have so many different OSs installed in a multi-boot arrangement that you need all those drives.

I ran clean reinstalls of Windows 10 on my computers last Summer and it was no great burden. It eradicated all traces of their earlier OSs and any unforeseen difficulties arising from their upgrades to Windows 10. It also ensured that there was no remaining possibility that old installations of anti-malware applications could come back to bite me in the future because their traces have been completely destroyed.

Denis

 

Thanks Denis... I just did a windows 10 install but kept all my settings and apps. I did it just make sure all the windows 10 files
were Ok...
While I was doing the install, I sat down on my wife's computer it is same os as mine windows 10 x 64.
It does the same mine does so I checked the share on her public user folder and it's got read and write for her account,
Everything on my public folder is identical... So I guess there is nothing wrong with mine either... So When ever that dang popup show it's face I'm just edit my settings to full for the folder and I'm done with it forever...Thanks for all the help man, and have a great one...Later... I kept the link for this post for future reference...
Oh, almost forgot, look at your public folder. I'll bet is sharing on you admin path but it's only read and write permission...

 

"I just did a windows 10 install but kept all my settings and apps" - a Windows 10 installation overwrites the whole of the drive. If you kept your settings & apps then you did a different sort of recovery procedure and I do not know what their effect on existing user accounts would be. Certainly, a "Repair install" would have no effect on user accounts and hence on user account problems.

I do not have any sharing set up on my Public folders. Like you, I have more than one drive and I use the same relocated user folders on my D:\ drive for all user accounts and, as a result, do not need to use the Public folders at all.

Denis

 

Sorry for the late return Denis...
I'll going to give switching the folders a shot see how it goes... I found this on switching folders on windows 10, But it's a bit different than your windows 7 link... Is the method on the tutorial of windows 10 the correct way to do it...

 

Raner,

Are you referring to Relocating user folders in Windows 7 and Windows 10? That procedure is valid for Windows 10.

Denis

 

Ok, Denis...
I'm good to go now, I figured out how to stop windows 10 from adding shot-cut icons to the users/public folder.
Seems windows 10 is adding the shot-cut icon in the user/public folder when I tick add short-cut to desktop when installing software.
No matter on which drive I install it in. But if I don't tick add short-cut to desktop, and simply go to the software folder and manually send the desktop short cut is gets installed in the admin users folder which is the location I wanted it installed in the first place. So that fixed my whole issue. The annoying pop-up (You need to provide administrator permission to change the settings) is gone...
Amazing how simple the fix was, But it ain't simple if you don't know what's causing the problem...*Wink
Maybe this post will help someone else...
The funny thing is if he or she does not get to the end of this post they will not know how simple the simple fix...
*ROFLMAO2
Now that I got everything working to my liking. I start moving all the folders from my SSD to my Hard Drive...
Thanks again Denis for all your help... RRG