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The Registry
Windows Tips Some may also be used in win95, win98, win98se,winnt 4.0, WinME, Win2000. Remove USER from Registry
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How to disable user profiles:
Restart Windows 95, click Cancel in the logon dialog box, open the Control Panel, double-click Passwords, select the User
Profiles tab, select All Users Of This PC Use The Same Preferences And
Desktop, click OK, and restart Windows 95.
But all the information stored in each person's user profile is still on the system.
To get rid of this information, you'll need to go through two steps, the first of which is editing the Registry.
( Note: As always, back up your Registry files--System.dat and User.dat, hidden files in your Windows
folder--before proceeding.)
Open the Registry Editor by selecting Start, Run, typing
regedit
and clicking OK.
Navigate your way to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\
CurrentVersion\ProfileList\(username).
To remove an individual profile, go to the left pane and right-click the (username) key that represents the profile you want to remove.
Select Delete, then click Yes to confirm.
To remove every profile at once, right-click the ProfileList key, select Delete, then click Yes to confirm.
Close the Registry Editor.
The first step towards permanently removing user profiles from your system:
Open the Registry Editor
(select Start, Run, type
regedit
and click OK), navigate your way to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows
\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\(username),
and delete the appropriate (username) keys (or delete the ProfileList key to remove all user profiles at once).
The second part of the removal process is to delete
the user profile information from inside the Windows folder.
First, make sure all "hidden" files are visible:
In any Explorer window, select View, Options, click the View tab, select Show All Files, and click OK.
(If you have IE 4.0 installed, select View, Folder Options, click the View tab, and select Show All Files under Advanced settings.)
In that same Explorer window, navigate your way to X:\Windows\Profiles, where X is the drive on which Windows 95 is
installed.
To delete an individual profile, delete the corresponding
C:\Windows\Profiles\(username) folder. To remove all user profiles,
delete the entire C:\Windows\Profiles folder.
( Note: If there's any part of a user profile you want to keep around,
such as a desktop configuration, be sure to read our next tip before
deleting that profile.)
Want to get rid of user profiles, but keep certain settings
that were set up under a specific profile?
You can retrieve them from the user profile folder, assuming you haven't deleted it.
For example, if you want to retain a user profile's desktop settings:
1. Delete the contents of the default desktop folder (probably
C:\Windows\Desktop).
2. Copy the contents of the user profile's Desktop folder
(C:\Windows\Profiles\(username)\Desktop) to the default desktop
folder.
Similarly, to keep a profile's Start Menu configuration, copy the
contents of the C:\Windows\Profiles\(username)\Start Menu folder to
C:\Windows\Start Menu.