Creating a New Windows User Account to Fix PC Troubles
We’ve learned a lot about Windows and computers over the last two decades, but we never stop learning new things. They say that necessity is the mother of invention. And sometimes solving serious computer problems in “new” innovative ways comes about because of necessity.
While Windows 10 offers a variety of ways to recover from serious computer problems – from System Restore, to File History, to System Reset – keeping all your personal files – or remove everything and reinstall Windows – to Factory reset, I use my computer for business and I can’t afford to have my work computer down while I reinstall dozens of programs and reset everything.
Last Saturday morning I took my computer off Airplane Mode (I disable my WiFi while I’m not using my computer) and I got a mysterious Windows error message telling me that my WiFi settings were incorrect or misconfigured. I power-cycled my router/modem/laptop three times before I was able to establish an internet connection. Still, when I clicked on my wireless connection icon, no dialog opened. So after that, I discovered that I could not open Notifications. And later on I would discover that my start menu froze and then disappeared. And even when I got it back some of the items, power settings, for example ,would not open. In fact, when I clicked on some of the items on the Windows 10 Start menu, the whole menu would freeze.
However, the Start button right-click menu worked perfectly…thankfully.
So the first thing I did was run System Restore, three different times, using three different restore points. But things were no better. I steeled myself and prepared myself to do a Windows 10 “Reset”. After giving it some thought, it came down to installing Classic Shell and at least having a working start menu and limp along with the many other problems that I suddenly had Limping along with a computer that isn’t working right is not really a good idea for someone who makes a living helping people with their computers. I really need to have a Windows installation that is setup like Windows 10, not with customizations and changes that most people using Windows 10 don’t have. So the time had come, I thought, to bite the bullet and do the System Reset while keeping all my personal files and folders. I had everything backed up and File History turned on, so I was not really worried about losing personal files.
System Reset, whether you chose “Keep my files” or “Remove everything”, requires a re-install all desktop apps (programs). If you choose to keep your personal files, Windows is nice enough to give you a list of programs you’ll need to reinstall.
So facing limping along with a broken computer or doing a reset, I chose to reset my PC and keep my personal files. I thought that would be faster and easier than wiping out everything and then copying my personal files from my backup. Before System Reset started to run, it presented a list of programs I’d need to install after the reset. One glance at that long litany of programs, including drivers, printer software, and dozens and dozens of desktop apps, my first thought was “I’m going to have to spend the next 3 days getting everything working right again!”. But I didn’t have 3 days. I had 36 hours. Monday morning was coming and I had Cloudeight Direct Computer Care repair sessions to do. Darcy already had a heavy schedule on Monday and I knew she couldn’t possibly cover for me.
Necessity, indeed, is the mother of invention. I had 36 hours to come up with an alternative solution to a major problem, without resorting to Windows 10 System Reset. An then an idea came to mind. I remember that sometimes corrupted user accounts can mimic serious computer problems. I didn’t know if my user account had become corrupted, but I knew how to find out.
First, I created a Super Admin account.
Here is how to do that on Windows 10:
- Right-click the Start button
- Click “Command Prompt” (administrator) and at the prompt type:
- net user administrator /active:yes
- Press Enter
- You should now see “The command completed successfully”.
After I created the super admin account, I logged out of my “Asus1” admin account. On the screen I had 2 sign-in options:
Asus1 (my default user account)
or
Administrator (the account I just created)
I logged into the new super Administrator account. I had to wait a few minutes while it set up the account. Once things were up and running, I tried my wireless connection and clicked its icon – it worked perfectly. Just like it should be. I clicked on the Notification icon – perfect. I tried the Windows 10 start menu, every item perfect. Nothing froze, everything worked as it should.
That convinced me that somehow my “Asus1” user account had become corrupted. How it became corrupted I don’t know – and when your scrambling to get things back to normal, it doesn’t matter.
So now, what I needed to do was create a new user account with admin privileges. That is easy enough to do from the super admin account. Right-click the Start menu, click Control Panel, switch to Icon view and find “User accounts” in the the Control Panel list.
With User accounts open, I clicked on “Manage another account” (above) then “Add a new user in PC settings”. Under “Other users” at the bottom I clicked “Add someone else to this PC” and followed the onscreen prompt to create an account I called “Thunder”.
While still logged in to the Super admin account I user File Explorer to browse to C:\Users\Asus1 and opened that folder (Windows balked but I clicked Continue to see all the files and folders in that directory.
(Hint: You will need to enable “View hidden files, folders…” and uncheck “Hide protected operating system files…” – Windows will balk again, just click OK. You can do this several ways. For this article just right-click the Start button, click Control Panel, switch to Icon view, and click on “File Explorer options”. Click the “View” tab at the top. You’ll see a list of items, just tick “Show hidden files, folders and drives” and uncheck the box next to “Hide protected operating system files…”)
I already had added a registry trick that adds Copy to/Move to to my right click menu. (You can get a little reg file we made to add Copy to / Move to to your right-click menu, from this page). I selected all the files in C:\Users\Asus1 and right-clicked on them and clicked “Copy to” and chose C:\Users\Thunder as the target. DO NOT CHOOSE “MOVE TO” .
There were were over 100 GB of files in C:\Users\Asus1. In the destination folder – C:\Users\Thunder there were some folders and files with the same name as the ones I was copying from my old user account. In order to make sure that the new account had all the data and information as my old account, I chose to “replace the file in the destination” folder (C:\Users\Thunder) with the file in the old User account folder. It took over eight hours to copy all the files and folders from my old user account to the new one.
Once the copying was done, I logged out of the Super admin account, and logged into my new user account “Thunder”. Everything was there. All my programs, and files and folders were there. Most of my programs ran without doing anything else. I only had to reinstall 2 programs – one of them was Windows Mail and the other was a program from Citrix we used to connect for Cloudeight Direct sessions. Of course, I had to reorganize my start menu. And I also had to personalize my computer – wallpaper, colors, etc.
Even though this procedure took over twelve hours from start to finish, it was a much better option than doing a System Reset and having to reinstall every single program and some drivers. I have over 100 programs installed, plus device drivers. It would have taken me days to get everything back and working, so 12 hours was not bad at all.
I have used my new account for almost three days now, and my computer is still running perfectly. I will give it a few more days and then if all is still well, I will delete my old user account.
I will also turn off the super admin account by doing this:
Right-click the Start button
Click “Command Prompt” (administrator)
At the prompt type:
net user administrator /active:no
Now press Enter
You should now see “The command completed successfully”.
Your super admin account will disappear. You can always bring it back again, if you ever need it.
I know it might not always be a corrupted Windows user account that causes users major problems, but many times it probably is. It’s so simple to tell if you have serious Windows/computer problems or if your user account has become corrupt. Create a super admin account, log out of your regular account, log into the super administrator account and try your computer from that account. If all works well then you’ll have a pretty good idea that your problems are being caused by a corrupted user account and not by serious Windows or computer problems.
Before doing a reset, it would be worth it to you to :
1. Try Shutting off your computer and make sure the power is completely off. Wait five minutes and turn it on. See if your problems are still there.
2. Try System Restore. You may want to try 2 or 3 different restore dates, should the first restore not fix your problems.
3. Check your user account to make sure it’s not corrupted. Follow the instructions above.
4. System Reset and Factory Reset are there for you if nothing else works – but these should be your last resort.
Thank you!!! This is a keeper for sure and going to share with my husband.
What a wonderful tip! Sure beats reset! Thanks!
I have read all of the above and had a few of the problems (start menu, notifications, and all right click on the taskbar ceased to work) i contacted the then free windows 10 answer desk 4 times, until it was finally fixed,and only yesterday it went again AND the free help wasn’t free now!. So i searched the internet and came across this solution, which happens to be what the tech people used and yes my problem was solved, all working fine now, perhaps you would like to put this in one of your newsletters. Look forward to seeing it posted.
There are literally dozens of sites with the same fix (Powershell) but let me say that this did not work for me.
Here’s another site with the same “tip” that doesn’t feel the need to advertise on other people’s sites:
http://www.thewindowsclub.com/cortana-taskbar-search-not-working-in-windows-10
Hi thanks for your comments. I just want to point out that my problems extended far beyond the start menu and taskbar not working. I tried the fix suggested and it did not work for me.
I have never heard of a “free Windows 10 help desk” – it sounds like a scam. Microsoft offers support but it’s not called Windows 10 help desk.
I believe if you read the article your are commenting on, it covered more than just fixing the start menu, Cortana, taskbar issue in Windows 10 – that’s actually a very common error and fairly easy to fix. The fix you cite using Powershell, did nothing for me. Glad it worked for you.
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Hi, I am thankful to you for sharing this awesome article with this helpful knowledge.
What an excellent tip! Sure beats reset!
Again thank you for your time.