Question never happy!

pc dopey

Commendable
Mar 7, 2021
44
2
1,535
ok grab a seat and a beer this is gonna be a good one, lol


about 3 months ago, I upgraded my PC bringing in extra ram and a new SSD. that being said I wanted everything to work faster than it did. with these new improvements, things did run MUCH faster. of course I'm that guy that's never happy I can always get a lil bit more right! well here's where it gets interesting . I wanted to bypass the welcome screen in my start up so that when I signed on, the computer would go from flash screen directly to my desktop and BANG! ready to rock. well because I'm running Windows 10 HOME edition, that option can only be done in POLICY GROUP EDITOR which doesn't come in windows 10 HOME. it had to be downloaded from a 3rd party .I downloaded a batch file from ITETHICS called GPEDIT.MSC. I downloaded it and went ahead and followed the procedures for getting rid of the welcome screen. Not only did it not do what I wanted it to do... it has locked me out of just about all permissions on my PC. I had a guy who is supposed to be an IT guy come over and try and fix this for me. what he did was copy the entire profile from the admin user and made another profile with admin permissions. well that didn't work so good and now my new 2TB SSD has 475GB left on it when I only had about 800 or so used before. and now with my NEW admin user profile.... I cant delete the old ones smh (can't make this crap up man) somebody P L E A S E help me !!! oh and be kind I'm that guy that knows JUST enough about computers to get myself screwed which is exactly what I did! at least I owned it lol
 

serafin152

Commendable
Feb 16, 2021
56
4
1,545
I dont know what your friend did and what you can or cannot do cuz of "it has locked me out of just about all permissions on my PC".

1. When you are in the sign-in screen, press and hold Shift key and click Power -> Restart at the lower-right corner and choose Safe Mode with Command Prompt.
Then type: net user administrator /active:yes


2.
If cmd doesnt help try to activate it here :
  1. Hold the Windows Key while pressing “R” to bring up the Windows Run dialog box.
  2. Type “regedit“, then press “Enter“.
  3. Navigate to the following:
    • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
    • SOFTWARE
    • Microsoft
    • Windows NT
    • CurrentVersion
    • Winlogon
    • SpecialAccounts
    • UserList
  4. On the right side, right-click on “UserList” and select “New” > “DWORD Value“.
  5. Give the value a name of “Administrator“. Press the “Enter” key when you are done.
  6. Close the Registry Editor and restart the computer.

Check if you are able to enable admin account. If yes try to change/delete your old accounts.
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
more logical approach would have been to upgrade to Win 10 Pro if you wanted Group Policy Edit.
well, he copied all the folders in your profile, thats is why it shrank as you hadn't moved any of the library folders out of your USER folder so it had copies of everything you already had.

If you don't want a welcome screen, set PC up to auto logon. No need to even use Group Policy then. just use netplwiz and you never see lock screen, it loads desktop.

You need to bite a bullet and start again.
Don't mess with deleting users, just reinstall from scratch as it will remove any other changes you may have made that are going to come back to bite you.
Do you have another drive in PC you can copy information too, I would move anything on C onto another drive and reinstall win 10, it makes more sense to me. Fresh start, no weird changes.
 

pc dopey

Commendable
Mar 7, 2021
44
2
1,535
ok grab a seat and a beer this is gonna be a good one, lol


about 3 months ago, I upgraded my PC bringing in extra ram and a new SSD. that being said I wanted everything to work faster than it did. with these new improvements, things did run MUCH faster. of course I'm that guy that's never happy I can always get a lil bit more right! well here's where it gets interesting . I wanted to bypass the welcome screen in my start up so that when I signed on, the computer would go from flash screen directly to my desktop and BANG! ready to rock. well because I'm running Windows 10 HOME edition, that option can only be done in POLICY GROUP EDITOR which doesn't come in windows 10 HOME. it had to be downloaded from a 3rd party .I downloaded a batch file from ITETHICS called GPEDIT.MSC. I downloaded it and went ahead and followed the procedures for getting rid of the welcome screen. Not only did it not do what I wanted it to do... it has locked me out of just about all permissions on my PC. I had a guy who is supposed to be an IT guy come over and try and fix this for me. what he did was copy the entire profile from the admin user and made another profile with admin permissions. well that didn't work so good and now my new 2TB SSD has 475GB left on it when I only had about 800 or so used before. and now with my NEW admin user profile.... I cant delete the old ones smh (can't make this crap up man) somebody P L E A S E help me !!! oh and be kind I'm that guy that knows JUST enough about computers to get myself screwed which is exactly what I did! at least I owned it lol

o.k. so I tried solution 1 but don't remember the password to windows i currently have no windows login password was able to bypass that quite a while ago. so I went to solution 2 and I was able to navigate up to WINLOGON. And thats it , there was no drop down for special accounts is there another term for that in that drop down?
 

pc dopey

Commendable
Mar 7, 2021
44
2
1,535
more logical approach would have been to upgrade to Win 10 Pro if you wanted Group Policy Edit.
well, he copied all the folders in your profile, thats is why it shrank as you hadn't moved any of the library folders out of your USER folder so it had copies of everything you already had.

If you don't want a welcome screen, set PC up to auto logon. No need to even use Group Policy then. just use netplwiz and you never see lock screen, it loads desktop.

You need to bite a bullet and start again.
Don't mess with deleting users, just reinstall from scratch as it will remove any other changes you may have made that are going to come back to bite you.
Do you have another drive in PC you can copy information too, I would move anything on C onto another drive and reinstall win 10, it makes more sense to me. Fresh start, no weird changes.

tried that too wont let me copy the files to another drive. goes through the motions and then at the very end tells me I need permissions from: and a long id number
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
its because windows knows you aren't the other user, even if you are. Users clearly have identifying numbers behind the scenes. So it happens on new installs too when you try to use files made by a previous user. Windows knows

You might not want to but reinstalling win 10 fresh will at least remove all traces of the previous user.
On another PC, download the Windows 10 media creation tool and use it to make a win 10 installer on USB

boot from installer

follow this guide: https://forums.tomshardware.com/faq/how-to-do-a-clean-installation-of-windows-10.3170366/
 

DSzymborski

Titan
Moderator
Will it let you up load them online? Do you have access to an internal or external optical drive burner that will allow you to burn to disk?

Honestly, at this point, your best option is a full wipe and reinstall, and then not mucking around with things unless you understand them in and out. Hopefully, before this mess, you treated making a backup plan, a basic part of responsible PC upkeep, with as much urgency as you did messing with Windows to remove the most minor of annoyances.
 
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pc dopey

Commendable
Mar 7, 2021
44
2
1,535
its because windows knows you aren't the other user, even if you are. Users clearly have identifying numbers behind the scenes. So it happens on new installs too when you try to use files made by a previous user. Windows knows

You might not want to but reinstalling win 10 fresh will at least remove all traces of the previous user.
On another PC, download the Windows 10 media creation tool and use it to make a win 10 installer on USB

boot from installer

follow this guide: https://forums.tomshardware.com/faq/how-to-do-a-clean-installation-of-windows-10.3170366/
well I managed to delete one of the user files but I didn't regain any hard drive space . i deleted the file then emptied the recycle bin apparently this information is hiding on the pc somewhere. also will I still keep all my user files after reinstalling windows?
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
Did you run disk cleanup? that might get space back. Have you restarted PC? that might help too.

no, clean install is a fresh start, windows would be like it was when you 1st started. Its why I suggested putting anything you want to keep onto a 2nd hdd as then you get to keep it. Clean install only looks at 1 hdd
 

pc dopey

Commendable
Mar 7, 2021
44
2
1,535
Did you run disk cleanup? that might get space back. Have you restarted PC? that might help too.

no, clean install is a fresh start, windows would be like it was when you 1st started. Its why I suggested putting anything you want to keep onto a 2nd hdd as then you get to keep it. Clean install only looks at 1 hdd
its not letting me move the files to my HDD need permissions
 

DSzymborski

Titan
Moderator
also doing the disk clean up and defrag as we speak

Why the defrag? That's not your problem.

I think you're way beyond the point where bothering with Disk Cleanup has any point. You need to wipe the hard drive, which means a full format, so you need to be considering how to backup what data you still have access to; from what you write, it appears you've been negligent at backing up your important files.
 
TL/DR. Reinstall your Windows from scratch. And if you aren't working in office with users in domain, don't bother about group policies.

Although if you want to break your system on purpose, install Windows Pro version, get crowbar and hacksaw and go ahead. But backup your private files - documents, pictures etc. before.
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
its not letting me move the files to my HDD need permissions

do this
go to settings/update & security/recovery
under advanced startup, click restart now button
this restarts PC in a blue menu
choose troubleshoot
choose advanced
choose command prompt
type notepad and press enter
in notepad, select file>open
Use file explorer to copy any files you need to save to USB or hdd
 

pc dopey

Commendable
Mar 7, 2021
44
2
1,535
do this
go to settings/update & security/recovery
under advanced startup, click restart now button
this restarts PC in a blue menu
choose troubleshoot
choose advanced
choose command prompt
type notepad and press enter
in notepad, select file>open
Use file explorer to copy any files you need to save to USB or hdd
ok so when I do this, I copy the entire user file to my external , then format C drive or just do a windows overlay ?
 

pc dopey

Commendable
Mar 7, 2021
44
2
1,535
thanks for all the suggestions folks so I ended up saving anything I wanted to another drive and re installing Windows 10 I'll NEVER go into the damn CMD prompt again haha
 

Koykis

Commendable
Jan 15, 2021
15
2
1,525
thanks for all the suggestions folks so I ended up saving anything I wanted to another drive and re installing Windows 10 I'll NEVER go into the damn CMD prompt again haha

As a guy who uses multiple operating systems daily, I have to say that this is not the right mentality. I understand your frustration but before you start typing or copying commands other people give you, you need to -AT LEAST- understand what they do if you are not interested in investing time to learn how the commands work for your operating system. The console can save you time and get you out of sticky situations way more easily than the UI.
I would recommend that you take it easy for a while, enjoy your newly installed OS and later try doing some simple stuff with the CMD to get familiar.

Just my two cents...