0

Can I safely delete any/all of these accounts, or will that break Windows 10 Home?

Administrator
DefaultAccount
Guest

I see lots of posts on how to delete system accounts, but I'm surprised I can't find any definitive answers as to whether Windows absolutely needs all three accounts.

*EDIT:

This mission started when I was trying to change permissions/ownership on some files, but the Permissions (and sharing) boxes were showing SID's instead of Names. I'm not sure when this started. Thus, I began research I found posts suggesting to add-then-remove a new user and that would fix the names, however it had no effect.

I eventually got the FullNames showing instead of SID. Perhaps my trial and error was getting out of hand but I then realized the only remaining issue is that MY account (linked to @hotmail) was still missing FullName. I confirmed that it exists in my Microsoft.

Still learning wmic context, I entered something like: `wmic useraccount set fullname="mynewname"'

I was aware that this didn't specify which account to name but I mistakenly assumed that it would either rename only the current account, or else throw an error, maybe a warning. Nope. All accounts renamed. sigh

After a frustrated hour of googling and experimenting with context, I finally got everything set like it was supposed to be. (Thankfully I had a list from before my mistake.)

REBOOT - changes gone. SID showing for all accounts except my son's @gmail-linked account - which is fine (perhaps only since he hasn't logged in yet?).

Changed them again, reboot, reverted.

Do I need to "commit" these changes somehow? What, at login, is confusing the user list?

Which brings me back to my original question -- No, the disabled accounts do not show on the login screen, but they do show in the permissions lists (with more control than me by default), and wmic tells me that Default & Guest do not require a password.

I was concerned that, even if an account isn't listed on the login screen, that it could still connect to the machine remotely (and with no password?)

Thanks for your patience; I'm obviously pretty green about some of this stuff, and got really frustrated with this, what appeared to be a pretty darn straightforward fix.

Useraccounts

Improve this question
1
  • It is not possible to delete the Administrator account. By default the account is disabled.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Oct 23, 2017 at 13:19

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1

Removing administrator and guest account is not possible, however you can disable these accounts if there available on the logon screen.

You can use the following command to disable them. For disabling admin account: Net user administrator /active:no

For disabling the guest account: Net user guest /active:no

Improve this answer
3
  • Worth pointing out that both of the built-in accounts in question are disabled by default. Additionally, the DefaultAccountisn't typically logged into (I don't even think it can be logged into) it's a profile used to template all other users.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Oct 23, 2017 at 17:12
  • @user787380 thank you for the tip -- the accounts are not showing on login screen, but much more annoyingly, they show in permissions and sharing dialogs, and without a name - just the SID. I see other posts with solutions, but none of them seem to working for me.
    – ashleedawg
    Commented Oct 24, 2017 at 10:26
  • Is the defaultAccount the same as the SYSTEM account?
    – beppe9000
    Commented Jan 19, 2019 at 1:15

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .