How to delete user folder windows 10
How to delete User Account in Windows 10
When a computer is used by many, it results in multiple Windows accounts. Some are used frequently, while some not so much. At some point, you will need to delete a user profile, primarily if they are not used at all or if its taking a lot of space. In this post, I will show you how to delete a User Account in Windows 10. We will also share how to backup existing profile data and files wherever necessary.
What happens when you delete a User Account?
All user accounts data is available in a folder inside C:\Users. The folder name will be the same as the name of the user. You can verify the exact name of the user by executing “net user” command on PowerShell or Command Prompt. When you delete a user account, this folder along with everything inside is deleted.
How to take a backup of User files?
The best way to take a backup is to copy the folder to an external drive or other partition partition. Later you can go through it, and keep whatever is necessary, and delete the rest. Here is how a typical user folder looks.
You can navigate to each folder, and copy whatever you like. Some of the potential folders are Desktop, Downloads, Pictures, Music, etc.
How to delete a User Account in Windows 10
There are two ways by which you can delete a User Account in Windows 10:
Let us take a look at them in details.
1] Delete User Account via Windows Account Settings
The warning is about the deletion of data of the user. When you remove an account, it will delete all the user data, including items like Desktop, Documents, Photos, Music, and other folders. If you haven’t backed up, there will be no way to recover those files.
2] Delete User Account using Command line
If you are deleting multiple user accounts, using the Command Prompt or PowerShell is efficient.
Open Command Prompt or PowerShell with admin privileges
Type the following and press the Enter key:
It will reveal the exact usernames on the computer.
It will delete the account and all the data without any warning. Remember to replace with the name of the user account.
When using the Command Prompt or PowerShell, be very careful that you do not end up deleting an incorrect account.
I hope the tutorial was easy to understand and helped you not only to delete a user account in Windows 10 but also take a backup of files of that account.
Date: September 1, 2019 Tags: User Account
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Ashish is a veteran Windows, and Xbox user who excels in writing tips, tricks, and features on it to improve your day to day experience with your devices.
How To Delete User Profile in Windows 10
In this article, we will see how to delete a profile for a user account without deleting the account itself. This will allow you to reset all preferences and settings for all apps and Windows for a specific user.
A user profile is a set of files and folders to store all the personal preferences, app settings, documents and other data. Every user account has an associated user profile. Usually, it is stored in the folder C:\Users\Username and includes a number of subfolders like Desktop, Documents, Downloads, etc along with hidden folders like AppData which store the settings for various Windows features and installed apps. The main purpose of the user profile is to create a personalized environment with individual options tailored to the end user.
If your user profile has got corrupted or if you need to reset it to default, then you can delete the profile without removing the account. The next time you sign-in, a new profile will automatically be created for your user account. Let’s see how it can be done.
Before proceeding, ensure that your user account has administrative privileges. Also, you cannot delete the profile for the current (active) account. Ensure you have signed in with another user account and not with the one whose profile data you wish to delete.
To delete a user profile in Windows 10, do the following.
The next time the user signs in, his or her profile will be re-created automatically, with all the default options and settings.
You might also be interested in learning how to delete a user profile manually. This procedure involves File Explorer and the Registry editor app.
Delete a user profile in Windows 10 manually
See how to go to a Registry key with one click.
That’s it! You just deleted the user profile for the account. It will be re-created using defaults the next time the user signs in.
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About Sergey Tkachenko
Sergey Tkachenko is a software developer from Russia who started Winaero back in 2011. On this blog, Sergey is writing about everything connected to Microsoft, Windows and popular software. Follow him on Telegram, Twitter, and YouTube.
6 thoughts on “ How To Delete User Profile in Windows 10 ”
Does not work for me. I can see two profiles “Default Profile ” and “DESKTOP-CPCG5CI/user”. First one lets me “Copy To…” and the second “Change Type…”. Delete option is greyed out on both of them. I can’t delete my user folder manually either. Netplwiz option shows me as administrator, but everything is locked up/greyed out.
Does anybody knows of a software able to remove multiple user profiles in Windows 10?
DelProf or DelProf2 are not working in Windows 10 even though it has worked for certain people.
How to Delete User Profile in Windows 10/8/7?
After a certain period of time, a user profile that you have in your system may become unusable and turns obsolete. In such situations keeping such local profiles or accounts stored in your PC would only overburden the hard disk thereby slowing down the system performance.
Thus it is very much necessary to rid those accounts or profiles which are not used that often, or pose a threat of being exploited by any stranger without your knowing. Though deleting the accounts in their usual manner would not be enough to permanently eradicate the profiles as they remain in the root directory of Windows 10 even after being deleted.
So, here in this article, we would present you few effective methods to delete user profiles on Windows 10/7/8.
Method 1: Delete User Profile using Local Group Policy Editor
In this method, we would employ the platform of Local Group Policy Editor where an user can bring about any change in the system by modifying the consoles and group policies. By deleting certain policies the user profile gets permanently rooted out of the directory. The method is elaborated as follows:
Step 1.Press “Windows Key + R” keyboard combination and the “Run” box would pop up at the bottom left corner of the Windows 10 screen.
Step 2.Now; input “lusrmgr.msc” and press “Enter”. Your Group Policy Editor would open up.
Step 3.In the policy editor window, click “Users’ on the left side bar.
Step 4.On clicking the “Users” option we would see all the accounts in the PC.
Step 5.Select the account that you wish to delete, and then right-click on it and hit “Delete” from the context menu.
NOTE: As mentioned earlier also, it will only delete the user account and not the user profile. Go through the further steps to delete the user profile also.
Step 6.Now; go to C drive and open the “Users’ folder to check out all the user account profiles in the system. Deleting the required folder from here would still not delete the profile completely.
Step 7.In order to remove it completely, press “Windows key + R” again to open “run” search panel, and type “sysdm.cpl” and press “Ok” to unfold the “System Properties” window.
Step 8. Switch over to the “Advanced“ tab and click “Settings” from the “User Profiles” option.
Step 9. Here you would actually see the user profiles stored in your Windows 10. Suppose if you want to delete the unknown account, click that account and “delete” button.
Step 10. A confirmation window would pop up. Press “Ok” to proceed and your user profile would get deleted permanently from your Windows 10.
Method #2: Remove User Profile from Settings Menu
This one is quite a simple one to follow as there are no requirements of hectic commands and code lines to delete the user profile. Settings menu too contain the secret of deletion. Just following the step by step instruction below to remove your user profile on Windows 10/7/8.
Step 1.From the Windows 10 “Start” menu button, select “Settings” app.
Step 2.Select “Accounts” option in the settings menu.
Step 3.Navigate to the “Family and Users” option and choose the account profile you want to delete. Click “Remove” to delete it.
Step 4.You will be asked with a confirmation message in which you have to click “Delete account with data” button and your user profile would be deleted.
Method #3: Remove User Profile Using Command Prompt
In this section, specific command lines are implemented to delete the account profile completely from the Windows 10 using command prompt which is a powerful command line interpreter. The detailed methodology is given in steps as follows:
Step 1.Press “Windows + X” to see a black box, and choose “command prompt (Admin)” to open the cmd with admin privileges.
Step 2. In the black dialog box of cmd, type “net users” next to “C:\Windows\system32>” and hit “Enter” to see all the account in the Windows 10.
Step 3. Type “net user “Username’/delete” next to the “C:\Windows\system32>” line. For instance if the account name is Example, then you type: net user “Example”/delete
You will be shown a message “Command completed successfully” indicating that the deletion is completed.
Conclusion:
Deletion of a user profile really matters if your system containing important credentials poses a risk of mischief any trespassers. But, no matter how many times you delete your user account, the profile still remains stored back in the disk. Thus, the methods mentioned above would help you to exterminate the account profile completely such that it would save you the disturbance of getting the user account display back again and again even after being removed.
How to remove the Folders from This PC in Windows 10
Microsoft renamed My Computer to Computer and then to This PC in Windows 8.1. It followed the same in Windows 10. Along with this name change, Microsoft introduced the display of 6 folders namely Documents, Pictures, Videos, Downloads, Music, and Desktop in This PC in both Windows 10 and Windows 8.1.
Those who did not want to display these folders found a way to hide these folders from This PC in Windows 8.1. This procedure will not work in Windows 10, as things are a bit different.
Remove the Folders from This PC in Windows 10
Even though you know how to show or hide folders from This PC in Windows 8.1, the same way is not possible in Windows 10 as Microsoft has changed Registry Keys a bit in Windows 10. But, do not worry. In this tutorial, I will let you know how to remove the six personal folders from This PC in Windows 10.
TIP: To do this with a click, use our Ultimate Windows Tweaker. You will see the setting in Customization > This PC > Customize inbuilt folders.
In Windows 10 Microsoft is maintaining a string ThisPCPolicy with a value of Show or Hide based on which folder is shown or hidden in This PC. If you set the ThisPCPolicy value to show, then that particular folder is shown in This PC, and if you set that value to Hide, then that folder is hidden from “This PC” in Windows 10.
Follow These Steps to show or hide folders from This PC in Windows 10
Press WIN+R key and open the RUN Dialog box and type “regedit” and hit enter. It opens the Registry Editor.
Next, we need to go to the following keys one after the other and need to change the value of ThisPCPolicy to Hide to hide that particular folder from “This PC” window in Windows 10.
Documents Folder:
Pictures Folder:
Videos Folder:
Downloads Folder:
Music Folder:
Desktop Folder:
As an example, let me show it for Pictures Folders and hide it from “This PC” window.
Open Registry Editor and navigate to the key specified and change the value of ThisPCPolicy to Hide.
Now, close the Registry Editor and open the “This PC” folder. You could see that Pictures folder from “This PC” window has been removed.
To get back the Pictures folder back, go the respective key and change the value of ThisPCPolicy to Show and you could see the Pictures folder again.
In this way, you need to change the value of ThisPCPolicy to Hide for all the six keys to hide them from the This PC window.
Note: All the keys mentioned above have the ThisPCPolicy string except for this key which is related to the Desktop folder-
For this, you need to create the string ThisPCPolicy for the desktop key and change its value to Hide.
PS: You can also remove the 3D Objects folder from This PC in Windows 10.
Date: December 23, 2019 Tags: Customize, Folder
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Sridhar is a Software Engineer who loves to stay updated with developments in the world of technology. He is fond of writing everything related to Internet, Computers and Mobile and Desktop Operating Systems.
How to Unmerge the User folder in Windows 10
How to Unmerge the User folder in Windows 10
The Windows 10 system allows users to change the default location of the User folders to another drive. This is probably to make sure that the files stay sage in case the system suddenly crashes. However, in some cases, while changing the path to another drive, for instance the D drive or any folder, the Windows system recognized it as a hard drive as well so even though the files will be saved on that folder, it will appear as a hard drive in the Windows Explorer or look merged with another folder. It could also be that you had dragged and dropped a user folder to another user folder by accident. So if you’re wondering how you can unmerge the User folders, read on as this post will guide you how exactly you can do that.
Take note that even if you try to use the File History to restore the User folders, it still won’t work and you won’t be able to move them back to their previous locations nor restore the folders back to their previous versions and it would only state that they are not available. In the instructions given below, we are using the Downloads folder as the example.
Step 1: Tap the Win + R keys to open the Run dialog box.
Step 2: Next, type “regedit” in the field and hit Enter to open the Registry Editor.
Step 3: After opening the Registry Editor, navigate to the following registry key:
ComputerHKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionExplorerUser Shell Folders
Step 4: Then double-click on the multi-string value located in the right hand pane. And in the Value Data, copy and paste the following value:
%USERPROFILE%Downloads
Step 5: Now click OK and close the Registry Editor.
Note: Look close enough and you’ll see that the multi-string values belong to each one of the folders. From there, you have Desktop, Favorites, Skydrive, Music, Pictures and many more.
Step 6: Restart your computer. After that, the operating system will pick up the new folder location during the startup. Here are the values for the other folders:
Step 7: Now all you have to do is to change the location correctly. Start by tapping the Win + E keys to open the Windows File Explorer.
Step 8: After that, right click on the Downloads folder located in the right-hand pane.
Step 9: Then click on Properties and go to the Location tab then type “D:Downloads” in the location box.
Step 10: Click the Apply button and then the OK button to save the changes made. Doing so would ensure that not only the Downloads folder is restored but also that it does not stay merged to another folder or appear as a drive.
Aside from the minimal merging of User folders issue, if you are currently experiencing other issues – from minimal ones to extreme ones – there is a one-click solution known as Restoro you can use. This program is a useful tool that could repair corrupted registries and optimize your PC’s overall performance. Aside from that, it also cleans out your computer for any junk or corrupted files that help you eliminate any unwanted files from your system. This is basically a solution that’s within your grasp with just a click. It’s easy to use as it is user-friendly. For a complete set of instructions for downloading and using it, refer to the steps below.
Perform a full system scan using Restoro. To do so, follow these steps:
