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#1
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slow boot : Please Wait for the User Profile Service
About once a week for the past 3 weeks my w7 x64 ult boots really slow,
taking over a minute for the desktop to appear. I see, "Please wait for the User Profile Service" for many seconds, then a black screen for another long delay, and finally the desktop. I read somewhere that flushing the DNS cache resolved this for some people, and it seems like that has been working for me, whenever I do that I get about a week or normal boot speeds. Does anyone have any idea what is causing this and how to resolve it? Should I figure out how to run a script at shutdown to flush the DNS cache every shutdown? |
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#2
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slow boot : Please Wait for the User Profile Service
Mike S wrote:
About once a week for the past 3 weeks my w7 x64 ult boots really slow, taking over a minute for the desktop to appear. I see, "Please wait for the User Profile Service" for many seconds, then a black screen for another long delay, and finally the desktop. I read somewhere that flushing the DNS cache resolved this for some people, and it seems like that has been working for me, whenever I do that I get about a week or normal boot speeds. Does anyone have any idea what is causing this and how to resolve it? Should I figure out how to run a script at shutdown to flush the DNS cache every shutdown? The User Profile Service manages the user profiles after Windows startup followed by loading whatever user profile into which you log into (aka Windows account). Profiles can be copied, deleted, added/created, and even become corrupt. Because of possible corruption of a user profile is why you should NEVER use the Administrator account as your own personal account. Administrator should be left alone for use only in emergencies. If you run out of admin-level Windows accounts, you lose control of managing Windows. In the services manager (services.msc), the following is the description for the User Profile Service: This service is responsible for loading and unloading user profiles. If this service is stopped or disabled, users will no longer be able to successfully logon or logoff, applications may have problems getting to users' data, and components registered to receive profile event notifications will not receive them. I recall but not the specifics that there was something about fixing the shutdown of this service upon Windows shutdown. I think it was called the User Profile Hive Cleanup Service (UPHClean). I used it back in Windows XP but didn't need it thereafter. http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/deta...p_service.html https://searchenterprisedesktop.tech...ofile-problems These kind of OS-specific fixes is why I do *not* upgrade to a new version of Windows. I start with a fresh install of the OS and then review what apps to install again but in the fresh OS install and migrate my data from my backups. You don't want to be lugging along fixes for the prior OS that are not applicable or incompatible with the new OS. Upgrades can be faster but they carry along more pollution. You could try restoring your user profile folder (%userprofile%) from your backups that were saved before the problem arose. Else, you could create a new user profile (Windows account) and copy what you can from your old profile folder. https://neosmart.net/wiki/corrupt-user-profile/ You need an admin-level Windows account to create or manage profiles and why I mentioned you should NEVER use the Administrator account except in these type of emergencies. In fact, after installing Windows, I usually create a secondary admin-level account called AdminBackup (in addition to my own personal-use account since I do too many things that require admin privs so a restricted user account is not an option). Instead and for quite a while, I rely on backups to get me back to a prior working state. Your user profile is in the file system on your storage media (disk). Like with any file system, a defective drive could cause corruption of the file system or of the files themselves. When was the last time you ran "chkdsk c: /r"? Do you have a drive monitor running that checks the S.M.A.R.T. attributes to monitor the health of your drive(s)? https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/...user-profiles/ I've encountered only 1 actually corrupted user profile so I know it can happen. There were no backups so it was easier to create a new user profile and move on with that. With users installing lots of software without realizing the impact on load during startup, often they neglect that some of that software adds startup programs, services, WinLogon events, logon scripts by account, and other means of loading software on starting Windows or as part of the logon process. That flushing the local DNS cache ("ipconfig /flushdns") temporarily eliminates the logon hang is more likely due to some software you choose to install and loads on either Windows startup or upon login. For example, maybe you are running a local caching DNS proxy that loads on Windows startup or login, and it has a problem with the Windows' DNS Client's cache. When the problem arises next time, see what happens when you boot into Windows' safe mode. That eliminates loading of startup programs and non-critical services. You could also peek into Event Viewer to see if it reports problems at the time of a Windows startup and login. |
#3
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slow boot : Please Wait for the User Profile Service
On 5/4/2018 8:02 PM, VanguardLH wrote:
Mike S wrote: About once a week for the past 3 weeks my w7 x64 ult boots really slow, taking over a minute for the desktop to appear. I see, "Please wait for the User Profile Service" for many seconds, then a black screen for another long delay, and finally the desktop. I read somewhere that flushing the DNS cache resolved this for some people, and it seems like that has been working for me, whenever I do that I get about a week or normal boot speeds. Does anyone have any idea what is causing this and how to resolve it? Should I figure out how to run a script at shutdown to flush the DNS cache every shutdown? The User Profile Service manages the user profiles after Windows startup followed by loading whatever user profile into which you log into (aka Windows account). Profiles can be copied, deleted, added/created, and even become corrupt. Because of possible corruption of a user profile is why you should NEVER use the Administrator account as your own personal account. Administrator should be left alone for use only in emergencies. If you run out of admin-level Windows accounts, you lose control of managing Windows. In the services manager (services.msc), the following is the description for the User Profile Service: This service is responsible for loading and unloading user profiles. If this service is stopped or disabled, users will no longer be able to successfully logon or logoff, applications may have problems getting to users' data, and components registered to receive profile event notifications will not receive them. I recall but not the specifics that there was something about fixing the shutdown of this service upon Windows shutdown. I think it was called the User Profile Hive Cleanup Service (UPHClean). I used it back in Windows XP but didn't need it thereafter. http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/deta...p_service.html https://searchenterprisedesktop.tech...ofile-problems These kind of OS-specific fixes is why I do *not* upgrade to a new version of Windows. I start with a fresh install of the OS and then review what apps to install again but in the fresh OS install and migrate my data from my backups. You don't want to be lugging along fixes for the prior OS that are not applicable or incompatible with the new OS. Upgrades can be faster but they carry along more pollution. You could try restoring your user profile folder (%userprofile%) from your backups that were saved before the problem arose. Else, you could create a new user profile (Windows account) and copy what you can from your old profile folder. https://neosmart.net/wiki/corrupt-user-profile/ You need an admin-level Windows account to create or manage profiles and why I mentioned you should NEVER use the Administrator account except in these type of emergencies. In fact, after installing Windows, I usually create a secondary admin-level account called AdminBackup (in addition to my own personal-use account since I do too many things that require admin privs so a restricted user account is not an option). Instead and for quite a while, I rely on backups to get me back to a prior working state. Your user profile is in the file system on your storage media (disk). Like with any file system, a defective drive could cause corruption of the file system or of the files themselves. When was the last time you ran "chkdsk c: /r"? Do you have a drive monitor running that checks the S.M.A.R.T. attributes to monitor the health of your drive(s)? https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/...user-profiles/ I've encountered only 1 actually corrupted user profile so I know it can happen. There were no backups so it was easier to create a new user profile and move on with that. With users installing lots of software without realizing the impact on load during startup, often they neglect that some of that software adds startup programs, services, WinLogon events, logon scripts by account, and other means of loading software on starting Windows or as part of the logon process. That flushing the local DNS cache ("ipconfig /flushdns") temporarily eliminates the logon hang is more likely due to some software you choose to install and loads on either Windows startup or upon login. For example, maybe you are running a local caching DNS proxy that loads on Windows startup or login, and it has a problem with the Windows' DNS Client's cache. When the problem arises next time, see what happens when you boot into Windows' safe mode. That eliminates loading of startup programs and non-critical services. You could also peek into Event Viewer to see if it reports problems at the time of a Windows startup and login. Thank you VanguardLH. |
#4
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slow boot : Please Wait for the User Profile Service
On Fri, 4 May 2018 22:02:13 -0500, VanguardLH wrote:
Mike S wrote: About once a week for the past 3 weeks my w7 x64 ult boots really slow, taking over a minute for the desktop to appear. I see, "Please wait for the User Profile Service" for many seconds, then a black screen for another long delay, and finally the desktop. I read somewhere that flushing the DNS cache resolved this for some people, and it seems like that has been working for me, whenever I do that I get about a week or normal boot speeds. Does anyone have any idea what is causing this and how to resolve it? Should I figure out how to run a script at shutdown to flush the DNS cache every shutdown? The User Profile Service manages the user profiles after Windows startup followed by loading whatever user profile into which you log into (aka Windows account). Profiles can be copied, deleted, added/created, and even become corrupt. Because of possible corruption of a user profile is why you should NEVER use the Administrator account as your own personal account. Administrator should be left alone for use only in emergencies. If you run out of admin-level Windows accounts, you lose control of managing Windows. In the services manager (services.msc), the following is the description for the User Profile Service: This service is responsible for loading and unloading user profiles. If this service is stopped or disabled, users will no longer be able to successfully logon or logoff, applications may have problems getting to users' data, and components registered to receive profile event notifications will not receive them. I recall but not the specifics that there was something about fixing the shutdown of this service upon Windows shutdown. I think it was called the User Profile Hive Cleanup Service (UPHClean). I used it back in Windows XP but didn't need it thereafter. http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/deta...p_service.html https://searchenterprisedesktop.tech...ofile-problems These kind of OS-specific fixes is why I do *not* upgrade to a new version of Windows. I start with a fresh install of the OS and then review what apps to install again but in the fresh OS install and migrate my data from my backups. You don't want to be lugging along fixes for the prior OS that are not applicable or incompatible with the new OS. Upgrades can be faster but they carry along more pollution. You could try restoring your user profile folder (%userprofile%) from your backups that were saved before the problem arose. Else, you could create a new user profile (Windows account) and copy what you can from your old profile folder. https://neosmart.net/wiki/corrupt-user-profile/ You need an admin-level Windows account to create or manage profiles and why I mentioned you should NEVER use the Administrator account except in these type of emergencies. In fact, after installing Windows, I usually create a secondary admin-level account called AdminBackup (in addition to my own personal-use account since I do too many things that require admin privs so a restricted user account is not an option). Instead and for quite a while, I rely on backups to get me back to a prior working state. Your user profile is in the file system on your storage media (disk). Like with any file system, a defective drive could cause corruption of the file system or of the files themselves. When was the last time you ran "chkdsk c: /r"? Do you have a drive monitor running that checks the S.M.A.R.T. attributes to monitor the health of your drive(s)? https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/...user-profiles/ I've encountered only 1 actually corrupted user profile so I know it can happen. There were no backups so it was easier to create a new user profile and move on with that. With users installing lots of software without realizing the impact on load during startup, often they neglect that some of that software adds startup programs, services, WinLogon events, logon scripts by account, and other means of loading software on starting Windows or as part of the logon process. That flushing the local DNS cache ("ipconfig /flushdns") temporarily eliminates the logon hang is more likely due to some software you choose to install and loads on either Windows startup or upon login. For example, maybe you are running a local caching DNS proxy that loads on Windows startup or login, and it has a problem with the Windows' DNS Client's cache. When the problem arises next time, see what happens when you boot into Windows' safe mode. That eliminates loading of startup programs and non-critical services. You could also peek into Event Viewer to see if it reports problems at the time of a Windows startup and login. Thanks for a lot of info. I have Win 7 Pro. User Accounts only shows 2 Accounts: - My Account which is says my user name and Administrator - Guest Account. I use Macrium Reflect regularly to have recent backups of Windows and all installed programs. Whenever I want to make some significant change, I will make an image first. Then after the change seems to work ok, I'll make another image. I keep a notebook log on all that kind of stuff. 2 questions: To avoid losing the only Administrator account, should I create another Administrator account and not use it unless my account gets trashed? Above, you said "I rely on backups to get me back to a prior working state." Can you explain what backups you mean? thanks. DC |
#6
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slow boot : Please Wait for the User Profile Service
DennyCrane wrote:
I have Win 7 Pro. User Accounts only shows 2 Accounts: - My Account which is says my user name and Administrator - Guest Account. The User Accounts app will not show hidden accounts. By default, the Administrator account is hidden. https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/wind...windows-vista/ Since the Administrator account should ONLY be used in emergencies, tis probably better to leave it hidden. Instead of using the cutsy bobble-head logon screen that divulges half of the security of a login (the username) and because I'd rather specify the account than pick one in a list, I configured Windows to show the standard login screen. It has one big security advantage over the bobble-head login screen: it guarantees the login credentials were captured only by the OS because that is the OS presenting the login window, not some malware pretending to be a login screen (Windows intercepts the Ctrl+Alt+Del keyboard scan code to ensure the login screen you see is the one from the OS). I don't need the Administrator account listed in the bobble-heads login window. I can simply enter "Administrator" as the account name in the standard login screen (https://i.stack.imgur.com/HHZBm.png). control.exe userpasswords2 Users tab: "Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer": Enabled (auto-login means anyone can physcially use your account on that computer even with a locked screen saver - just reboot) Advanced tab: Secure login - Requires users to press Ctrl+Alt+Delete Enabled I use Macrium Reflect regularly to have recent backups of Windows and all installed programs. Whenever I want to make some significant change, I will make an image first. Then after the change seems to work ok, I'll make another image. I keep a notebook log on all that kind of stuff. If UAC is enabled, you get a prompt to allow Macrium run with admin privileges. Backup jobs scheduled in Macrium create Task Scheduler events that run under the SYSTEM account. 2 questions: To avoid losing the only Administrator account, should I create another Administrator account and not use it unless my account gets trashed? Your normal logon is in the Administrators newsgroup. When you see your Windows account with "Administrator" under in the User Accounts wizard, that only means that Windows account was added to the Administrators security group. Your account is likely also a member of the Home Users security group. An account can be included in multiple security groups. To see some more info about your account, run: control.exe userpasswords2 Alas, I have the Home edition which does not include the group policy editor (gpedit.msc). That would let you see a list of the security groups by their names. As I recall, it also listed the privileges of each one. You can use "net user" to get a list of Windows accounts (that you're allowed to use). To get more info on your account, like to which security groups your account is assigned, run: net user youraccount To see which account is attached to which security group, run "net localgroup securitygroup". For example: net localgroup (list all the user security groups) net localgroup Administrators (all in the Administrator security group) net localgroup homeusers (all in the Home Users security group) Getting a list of what privileges (aka permissions) are specified in which security group (SYSTEM, Administrators, Home Users, etc) is more tricky requiring, for example, use of the icacls command. I only touch that when I'm forced to so I'm not expert with it. That's why I miss the gpedit.msc wizard in the Home edition. I'm not talking about folder and file permissions (ACLs, or access control lists) in NTFS that you can see in Windows Explorer by right-clicking a folder or file, pick Properties from the context menu, and looking under the Security tab. There are permissions in security groups (to which accounts are assigned) that say what that account can do in the OS. File permissions in NTFS is a separate security mechanism but can also be assigned by account name or security group. If you perform regularly scheduled backups (so they actually get done instead of relying on you to do them), you don't need a backup Administrator account. When you restore from an image backup, you'll get back your user profile just like it was at backup time. If you don't do backups then, yes, make sure the admin-level account you use is one that was created for you, not the Administrator account. Only use the Administrator account in emergencies. Awhile back, I also created a duplicate of the Administrator account: create a new account as an administrator (i.e., in the Administrators security group) named something like AdminBackup, and never touch it unless somehow you screw up the Administrators account which you shouldn't be using, anyway. To make it a duplicate, you need 3 admin account: yours, Administrator, and AdminBackup. You copy the Administrator profile atop of the AdminBackup profile using your admin-level account (copying of user profiles requires admin privs). In your admin-level account, run: control.exe sysdm.cpl Go under the Advanced tab and click on Settings for User Profiles. There you can copy Adminstrator's profile atop of AdminBackup's (or whatever you called the backup admin emergency-only account). You cannot be logged into the account whose profile you want to copy from or copy into hence the need for the 3rd admin-level account to do the profile copying. You could just leave AdminBackup with its own profile which has nothing setup as in the Administrator profile. You just create the AdminBackup account in the Administrators group. I usually do some setup in Administrator that I also want in the backup Administrator account. If you don't logon and use the Administrtator account as your daily account then you probably don't need a backup Administrator account, especially if you schedule regular image backups of the OS partition. Obviously image backups are useless if saved on the save disk (even in another partition) when the disk dies. You need to save image backups somewhere else than the disk with the OS partition. Above, you said "I rely on backups to get me back to a prior working state." Can you explain what backups you mean? I do image backups of the partition(s) with the OS and apps. Partitions with just data can be saved using image or logical (file level) backups. With an image backup, a restore puts back the disk to the same state is was during the backup. That is still a logical state so files may not occupy the same sectors. The only way to get an exact state restore is to perform a sector-by-sector copy but that wastes a lot of time if most of the disk is empty (unused clusters in the file system). System Restore might work but too often it fails. It is only a *system* restore and somewhat flaky at that. It does not restore your apps or your data. I turned it off because it is, to me, a waste of disk space. Anyone doing image backups should kill System Restore; however, that means you perform regularly scheduled image backup. Anytime the user is left in charge of doing the backups means they won't get done except once or twice and then forgotten. My image backups are scheduled to run once per day. When I'm about to perform some major surgery on the OS (e.g., Windows updates) or even before installing software (because uninstallers are very often incomplete), I perform a manual image backup. To dare a change means you should plan an escape route. |
#7
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slow boot : Please Wait for the User Profile Service
On Sun, 06 May 2018 16:56:32 -0400, Paul
wrote: wrote: On Fri, 4 May 2018 22:02:13 -0500, VanguardLH wrote: Mike S wrote: About once a week for the past 3 weeks my w7 x64 ult boots really slow, taking over a minute for the desktop to appear. I see, "Please wait for the User Profile Service" for many seconds, then a black screen for another long delay, and finally the desktop. I read somewhere that flushing the DNS cache resolved this for some people, and it seems like that has been working for me, whenever I do that I get about a week or normal boot speeds. Does anyone have any idea what is causing this and how to resolve it? Should I figure out how to run a script at shutdown to flush the DNS cache every shutdown? The User Profile Service manages the user profiles after Windows startup followed by loading whatever user profile into which you log into (aka Windows account). Profiles can be copied, deleted, added/created, and even become corrupt. Because of possible corruption of a user profile is why you should NEVER use the Administrator account as your own personal account. Administrator should be left alone for use only in emergencies. If you run out of admin-level Windows accounts, you lose control of managing Windows. In the services manager (services.msc), the following is the description for the User Profile Service: This service is responsible for loading and unloading user profiles. If this service is stopped or disabled, users will no longer be able to successfully logon or logoff, applications may have problems getting to users' data, and components registered to receive profile event notifications will not receive them. I recall but not the specifics that there was something about fixing the shutdown of this service upon Windows shutdown. I think it was called the User Profile Hive Cleanup Service (UPHClean). I used it back in Windows XP but didn't need it thereafter. http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/deta...p_service.html https://searchenterprisedesktop.tech...ofile-problems These kind of OS-specific fixes is why I do *not* upgrade to a new version of Windows. I start with a fresh install of the OS and then review what apps to install again but in the fresh OS install and migrate my data from my backups. You don't want to be lugging along fixes for the prior OS that are not applicable or incompatible with the new OS. Upgrades can be faster but they carry along more pollution. You could try restoring your user profile folder (%userprofile%) from your backups that were saved before the problem arose. Else, you could create a new user profile (Windows account) and copy what you can from your old profile folder. https://neosmart.net/wiki/corrupt-user-profile/ You need an admin-level Windows account to create or manage profiles and why I mentioned you should NEVER use the Administrator account except in these type of emergencies. In fact, after installing Windows, I usually create a secondary admin-level account called AdminBackup (in addition to my own personal-use account since I do too many things that require admin privs so a restricted user account is not an option). Instead and for quite a while, I rely on backups to get me back to a prior working state. Your user profile is in the file system on your storage media (disk). Like with any file system, a defective drive could cause corruption of the file system or of the files themselves. When was the last time you ran "chkdsk c: /r"? Do you have a drive monitor running that checks the S.M.A.R.T. attributes to monitor the health of your drive(s)? https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/...user-profiles/ I've encountered only 1 actually corrupted user profile so I know it can happen. There were no backups so it was easier to create a new user profile and move on with that. With users installing lots of software without realizing the impact on load during startup, often they neglect that some of that software adds startup programs, services, WinLogon events, logon scripts by account, and other means of loading software on starting Windows or as part of the logon process. That flushing the local DNS cache ("ipconfig /flushdns") temporarily eliminates the logon hang is more likely due to some software you choose to install and loads on either Windows startup or upon login. For example, maybe you are running a local caching DNS proxy that loads on Windows startup or login, and it has a problem with the Windows' DNS Client's cache. When the problem arises next time, see what happens when you boot into Windows' safe mode. That eliminates loading of startup programs and non-critical services. You could also peek into Event Viewer to see if it reports problems at the time of a Windows startup and login. Thanks for a lot of info. I have Win 7 Pro. User Accounts only shows 2 Accounts: - My Account which is says my user name and Administrator - Guest Account. I use Macrium Reflect regularly to have recent backups of Windows and all installed programs. Whenever I want to make some significant change, I will make an image first. Then after the change seems to work ok, I'll make another image. I keep a notebook log on all that kind of stuff. 2 questions: To avoid losing the only Administrator account, should I create another Administrator account and not use it unless my account gets trashed? Above, you said "I rely on backups to get me back to a prior working state." Can you explain what backups you mean? thanks. DC Using a Macrium emergency boot disc, you are Administrator at that time. And you have permission to replace the entire C: and System Reserved, with the one recorded in the MRIMG file. If you want to create another account, then go to Groups and add the Administrator Group to the account, that will give you a spare account to use. control userpasswords2 That should offer some options. Paul I Googled "add the Administrator Group" and "control userpasswords2". Looks like I have some reading to do. Amazing what a person can find when you have the right keywords! Thanks, Paul. DC |
#8
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slow boot : Please Wait for the User Profile Service
On Sun, 6 May 2018 16:26:15 -0500, VanguardLH wrote:
DennyCrane wrote: I have Win 7 Pro. User Accounts only shows 2 Accounts: - My Account which is says my user name and Administrator - Guest Account. The User Accounts app will not show hidden accounts. By default, the Administrator account is hidden. https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/wind...windows-vista/ Since the Administrator account should ONLY be used in emergencies, tis probably better to leave it hidden. Instead of using the cutsy bobble-head logon screen that divulges half of the security of a login (the username) and because I'd rather specify the account than pick one in a list, I configured Windows to show the standard login screen. It has one big security advantage over the bobble-head login screen: it guarantees the login credentials were captured only by the OS because that is the OS presenting the login window, not some malware pretending to be a login screen (Windows intercepts the Ctrl+Alt+Del keyboard scan code to ensure the login screen you see is the one from the OS). I don't need the Administrator account listed in the bobble-heads login window. I can simply enter "Administrator" as the account name in the standard login screen (https://i.stack.imgur.com/HHZBm.png). control.exe userpasswords2 Users tab: "Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer": Enabled (auto-login means anyone can physcially use your account on that computer even with a locked screen saver - just reboot) Advanced tab: Secure login - Requires users to press Ctrl+Alt+Delete Enabled I use Macrium Reflect regularly to have recent backups of Windows and all installed programs. Whenever I want to make some significant change, I will make an image first. Then after the change seems to work ok, I'll make another image. I keep a notebook log on all that kind of stuff. If UAC is enabled, you get a prompt to allow Macrium run with admin privileges. Backup jobs scheduled in Macrium create Task Scheduler events that run under the SYSTEM account. 2 questions: To avoid losing the only Administrator account, should I create another Administrator account and not use it unless my account gets trashed? Your normal logon is in the Administrators newsgroup. When you see your Windows account with "Administrator" under in the User Accounts wizard, that only means that Windows account was added to the Administrators security group. Your account is likely also a member of the Home Users security group. An account can be included in multiple security groups. To see some more info about your account, run: control.exe userpasswords2 Alas, I have the Home edition which does not include the group policy editor (gpedit.msc). That would let you see a list of the security groups by their names. As I recall, it also listed the privileges of each one. You can use "net user" to get a list of Windows accounts (that you're allowed to use). To get more info on your account, like to which security groups your account is assigned, run: net user youraccount To see which account is attached to which security group, run "net localgroup securitygroup". For example: net localgroup (list all the user security groups) net localgroup Administrators (all in the Administrator security group) net localgroup homeusers (all in the Home Users security group) Getting a list of what privileges (aka permissions) are specified in which security group (SYSTEM, Administrators, Home Users, etc) is more tricky requiring, for example, use of the icacls command. I only touch that when I'm forced to so I'm not expert with it. That's why I miss the gpedit.msc wizard in the Home edition. I'm not talking about folder and file permissions (ACLs, or access control lists) in NTFS that you can see in Windows Explorer by right-clicking a folder or file, pick Properties from the context menu, and looking under the Security tab. There are permissions in security groups (to which accounts are assigned) that say what that account can do in the OS. File permissions in NTFS is a separate security mechanism but can also be assigned by account name or security group. If you perform regularly scheduled backups (so they actually get done instead of relying on you to do them), you don't need a backup Administrator account. When you restore from an image backup, you'll get back your user profile just like it was at backup time. If you don't do backups then, yes, make sure the admin-level account you use is one that was created for you, not the Administrator account. Only use the Administrator account in emergencies. Awhile back, I also created a duplicate of the Administrator account: create a new account as an administrator (i.e., in the Administrators security group) named something like AdminBackup, and never touch it unless somehow you screw up the Administrators account which you shouldn't be using, anyway. To make it a duplicate, you need 3 admin account: yours, Administrator, and AdminBackup. You copy the Administrator profile atop of the AdminBackup profile using your admin-level account (copying of user profiles requires admin privs). In your admin-level account, run: control.exe sysdm.cpl Go under the Advanced tab and click on Settings for User Profiles. There you can copy Adminstrator's profile atop of AdminBackup's (or whatever you called the backup admin emergency-only account). You cannot be logged into the account whose profile you want to copy from or copy into hence the need for the 3rd admin-level account to do the profile copying. You could just leave AdminBackup with its own profile which has nothing setup as in the Administrator profile. You just create the AdminBackup account in the Administrators group. I usually do some setup in Administrator that I also want in the backup Administrator account. If you don't logon and use the Administrtator account as your daily account then you probably don't need a backup Administrator account, especially if you schedule regular image backups of the OS partition. Obviously image backups are useless if saved on the save disk (even in another partition) when the disk dies. You need to save image backups somewhere else than the disk with the OS partition. Above, you said "I rely on backups to get me back to a prior working state." Can you explain what backups you mean? I do image backups of the partition(s) with the OS and apps. Partitions with just data can be saved using image or logical (file level) backups. With an image backup, a restore puts back the disk to the same state is was during the backup. That is still a logical state so files may not occupy the same sectors. The only way to get an exact state restore is to perform a sector-by-sector copy but that wastes a lot of time if most of the disk is empty (unused clusters in the file system). System Restore might work but too often it fails. It is only a *system* restore and somewhat flaky at that. It does not restore your apps or your data. I turned it off because it is, to me, a waste of disk space. Anyone doing image backups should kill System Restore; however, that means you perform regularly scheduled image backup. Anytime the user is left in charge of doing the backups means they won't get done except once or twice and then forgotten. My image backups are scheduled to run once per day. When I'm about to perform some major surgery on the OS (e.g., Windows updates) or even before installing software (because uninstallers are very often incomplete), I perform a manual image backup. To dare a change means you should plan an escape route. Wow, I need to be careful what I ask for. Thanks for all your help! DC |
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