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I have 5 computers I remotely manage for a customer at an internet cafe the other side of the world from me, using TeamViewer 11. All computers have been upgraded to Windows 10.

2 computers are used by staff only and have admin privileges on the sole account. No issues there (so far...)

3 computers are used by customers for internet browsing. Initially, when I first started management of these computers, all three of these computers had been installed by someone else with one user account with full admin privileges. The inevitable happened and a disgruntled customer changed the password on one machine and left, never to return, leaving only a cryptic password "clue" and therefore an unusable computer.

I was retained and from a distance, talked the owner through using a boot disk to get to the startup screen, use "net user" and "net localgroup" to add an Admin user and assign to Administrators group, boot and log in to that then install TeamViewer and leave rest to me.

So I ensured Admin account we had created was working and then I logged in to it and using lusrmgr reset the password for the other user to nothing, took them out of the Administrators group and disabled ability for standard user to change password.

Local User was then able to log on to the machine and browse the internet as a Standard User.

I went into the other two machines and implemented the same changes; using lusrmgr to add an Admin account, and demote the local user to Standard User.

All ran well for about 2 weeks; then last night I TeamViewered into the machines to upgrade the anti virus. Two of the machines - no problems; I went to install, received the UAC prompt, entered the Admin password I had created, AV installed happily, then I uninstalled old unlicenced AV, again entering password at UAC prompt. Lovely. As it should be..

Third machine, not so much. I went to uninstall old AV, received UAC prompt, entered password and system told me it couldn't find the package I was trying to uninstall.... OK..... we'll deal with that in a bit ... I downloaded new AV package, clicked to install, received UAC prompt, entered Admin password .... and it told me it couldn't find the package I was trying to install... I went to the download directory, found the package, right clicked and selected "run as Administrator", entered password at UAC prompt ... and again.... reported that it couldn't find the package.

I try switching users to the Admin user I had created ... and received the dreaded "couldn't load profile" message I have seen posted about. Right. Great. ... so... back into local non-admin user and view the C:\Windows\Users directory ... no "Admin" user folder present - only the local user...WTF?

Tried using task manager to run the lusrmgr as Admin, but "Run New Task" did not give me the option to run as administrator. I tried regedit - it comes up when it's searched for and will open as local user, but when you right click and "run as administrator" it says "could not find regedit.exe". Nor could it find "cmd.exe" when I right clicked on that and tried to run as Admin. Every other application I try as Administrator gives me the same error... it'll run as Local User, but when right-clicked and "run as Administrator" ... error - cannot find the application.

As far as I am aware, my options now would be to either get client to boot from Windows 10 disk, at startup screen press Shift + F10 to get command prompt, copy in the "Default" profile folder from one of the other machines that works (which I have saved away...) then use "net user" to either activate the onboard Administrator account or delete and re-add a new Admin account so that it picks up the non-corrupted Default folder (I am assuming the old folder is corrupted...) ... or blow away the system and re-install from a clean image. I am very tempted by this "Nuclear" solution...

Before I implement either of the two solutions, is this something anybody has come across before, and how did you fix it? It is extremely vexing and more so that I can only access these computers remotely - I don't have the luxury of travelling halfway around the world to sit in front of the machine and fix it.

Excuse the long post, looking forward to any replies, responses, tips or information you can send my way

(P.S. when fixed, would it be, as I think, a benefit to take the local user out of the users group and have them in the "Guest" group in case there has been some ...."meddling"?)

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    Rather than voting that the question shows no research effort or is unclear, how about maybe asking for clarification. I have spent hours trying to find an answer to this problem and have come here because I could find no answer...
    – Darío Martín
    Commented Oct 16, 2016 at 0:10

1 Answer 1

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A complete wipe & reinstall is definitely preferable to trying to "hack" your way back in & fiddle with the accounts. You never know what else the user might have done to monkey-wrench the machine (without having log access), so you may be wasting your time anyway. In my experience, changing a password is the least a disgruntled user will do with admin privileges.

Once that is done I would just give the Guest account enough privileges unless

  • there is a reason to split the accounts between machines (logging users, for example), and/or
  • the guest account would have excessive privileges (to avoid the problem you have now from reoccurring)

...that is the simplest solution.

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  • Many many thanks for that. I guessed I think that that was going to be the outcome, but just wanted to see if anyone else had come across this particular "undocumented program feature" of Windows 10
    – Darío Martín
    Commented Jan 16, 2017 at 1:17

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