Mysterious user profiles

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  1. Posts : 18
    Windows 7 Home premium 64bit
       #1

    Mysterious user profiles


    When I click User Accounts in control panel, and then configure advanced user profile properties, there are 3 Account Unknows at the top.
      My Computer


  2. Posts : 19,383
    Windows 10 Pro x64 ; Xubuntu x64
       #2

    Hi Mike,

    What are the names of these accounts? can you take a screencapture of them and post it here please?

    Regards,
    Golden
      My Computer


  3. Posts : 18
    Windows 7 Home premium 64bit
    Thread Starter
       #3

    ok.
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails Mysterious user profiles-userprofiles.jpg  
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  4. Posts : 19,383
    Windows 10 Pro x64 ; Xubuntu x64
       #4

    OK. The bottom one is an account used by Nvidia to deliver updates, probably for your graphics card. From the reasearch I've done, it appears innocous enough, although its a bit sneaky on their behalf to do that. For more info see:

    Unknown User Account

    The Account Unknown I'm not quite sure about. Is there anybody else that logs onto your computer? Can you see these accounts under C:\Users?

    Regards,
    Golden
      My Computer


  5. Posts : 18
    Windows 7 Home premium 64bit
    Thread Starter
       #5

    I'm the only one that uses my computer, and I don't see them under C:\users
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  6. Posts : 19,383
    Windows 10 Pro x64 ; Xubuntu x64
       #6

    OK. I've asked for some more experienced people to have a look at this Mike.

    Regards,
    Golden
      My Computer


  7. Posts : 10,455
    Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit Service Pack 1
       #7

    I have similar accounts in security. I think they came from virtual machines I created. Are you using VirtualBox or VMplayer?
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  8. Posts : 742
    MS Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit SP1
       #8

    Did you by any chance created users previously and deleted them? Or your windows 7 is an upgrade from an earlier windows where these owners exist.

    Account Unknown is usually a leftover from previously created user accounts. You can safely delete these profiles one by one.
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  9. Posts : 18
    Windows 7 Home premium 64bit
    Thread Starter
       #9

    Nope, my profile is the only one that has been on my computer.
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  10. Posts : 31,250
    Windows 11 Pro x64 [Latest Release and Release Preview]
       #10

    The users with the "unknown" title can normally be traced to previous users. The issue is often caused due to the way that NTFS stores data and the access permissions for the data.

    Say you have some data (files/Photos/Etc.), and you give permissions for a user "Fred" to access it, the system does not see this user as "Fred" but as a long series of numbers known as the SID.

    The SID is unique for each user, on each system, if you move the data to a second system, (even one with a user called "Fred"), the system will not recognise the SID of the first user and thus show it as unknown, (or it may actually show a SID reference S......).

    This will happen on completely new systems when accessing data created on a previous or Just different system as the NTFS Security Identifier is saved as part of the file header

    This can also occur if you have a multiboot system, that uses NTFS Security (NT/Win2000/XP/Vista/Win7), that access the same data
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