120. How Do I Delete A User Account Profile

While user profiles are ideal for allowing each user of a PC their own personal, private, space, they can, depending upon the settings selected, take up quite a lot of disk space. It must be remembered that, as well as general settings, everything stored in the My Document file, including Photo's and Music are added to the user profile file.

While it is not a good idea to delete user profiles in an ad hoc fashion, there maybe times when, for instance the user purchases a PC of their own or, in the case of a Company, an employee leaves his/her employment. that it may become necessary to completely delete the whole profile.

This is quite a simple matter to achieve; however, it should be pointed out that you cannot delete the profile that you are currently logged in as. The current user profile can only be deleted by logging in as another user.

To delete a user profile proceed as follows. Please Note: Once a user profile has been deleted it has gone forever. You can re-create the user name, etc, but you will not be able to recover any of the original user profile files/settings.

Make sure you are logged on to your PC as Administrator.
Click the Start button.
From the Start Menu click Control Panel.
In the Control Panel Window click the User Account Icon.
In the User Account Window Click on the icon of the user you wish to delete.
A new window appears now with the legend 'What do you want to change about ...... Account' (where ....... is the users name).
At the bottom of the list of options you will see Delete the Account. Click on this option.
In the next window you are asked whether you want to Keep files or Delete files.
As you permanently want to delete the profile click the Delete Files button.
Another screen will now appear asking if you are sure you want to delete the account. Press the Delete Account button.
The account will now be deleted and you will be returned to the Main user profile window.
Finally close the window.
You account has now been deleted. All that remains is for you to close the User account window by pressing the X in the top right hand corner.