Remove hidden Admin account, help

DBBG · Oct 18, 2025

Hello,
I'm trying clean up some files and clutter on my machine and I've been having some difficulty trying to figure out how to remove an admin account that I'm not sure I need anymore. The account is AdminDerek13500.
I don't see it any but the c/users folders, it is not listed in any of the account tools for removal.
I'm using the dwb account for daily activities and usually stay out of the built in Admin account and have another account I added as a back up if i were to get locked out, DerekAD.

What is the right way to go about removing the adminderek13500 account?

DTG1 · Oct 18, 2025

in Microsoft's infinite wisdom and because of the lack of communication in house, there are things with Administrator and Administrators, yes two separate accounts.

glasskuter · Oct 18, 2025

User profiles are in registry HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList.
Each user profile has a subkey here identified by a long alphanumeric string called a Security Identifier (SID). Inside each SID subkey, the ProfileImagePath value points to the location of the user's profile folder on the hard drive.
You have to open each subkey to find the account name associated with key.

Always backup your registry before making changes.

Ghot · Oct 18, 2025

@DTG1

I gave you ten points for filling out your computer specs.

Try3 · Oct 18, 2025

Your computer name is derek13500
There is no sign of any user account called adminderek13500
The foldername Administrator.adminderek13500 is very strange.
- Have you possibly tried to rename the normally hidden & disabled Built-in Admin [the one with the username Administrator]?
- Or have you possibly experienced user profile corruption in the past?
Otherwise it looks like you used to have a user account called Administrator.adminderek13500 that no longer exists.

And don't be misled, there is no account called Administrators. That is the name of the group to which all your Admin accounts belong.

I suggest you just have a nose around the folder C:\Users\Administrator.adminderek13500 so that you can copy off any files of interest.
While you're in there, see if any files ring a bell. That folder exists for a reason & that user account Administrator.adminderek13500 existed for a reason.
Then you'll know you are ready to delete it but there's no hurry if you are unsure about how that folder came to exist.

Denis

DBBG · Oct 19, 2025

Try3 said:
Your computer name is derek13500
There is no sign of any user account called adminderek13500
The foldername Administrator.adminderek13500 is very strange.
- Have you possibly tried to rename the normally hidden & disabled Built-in Admin [the one with the username Administrator]?
- Or have you possibly experienced user profile corruption in the past?
Otherwise it looks like you used to have a user account called Administrator.adminderek13500 that no longer exists.

And don't be misled, there is no account called Administrators. That is the name of the group to which all your Admin accounts belong.

I suggest you just have a nose around the folder C:\Users\Administrator.adminderek13500 so that you can copy off any files of interest.
While you're in there, see if any files ring a bell. That folder exists for a reason & that user account Administrator.adminderek13500 existed for a reason.
Then you'll know you are ready to delete it but there's no hurry if you are unsure about how that folder came to exist.

Denis

@denis, It's pretty mystifying and I don't want to delete anything that shouldn't be. There is very little information stored in the profile that I can access, mostly music production vst presets and Onedrive files leftover after switching off OneDrive and the last time I accessed it was 2023, I think. All of the files are also backed up to other accounts and drives. I'm not in a huge rush to get rid of the account but I wanted to slim down the c drive before jumping to the 25h2 update. I'm just stumped as to why it doesn't show up in the control panel or settings.
Can it be deleted as a folder or is there a more involved process? I do have revo uninstaller available.
Thanks for the advice. I'm going to do some more research before deleting to get a better understanding of how my machine operates. I'm not super fluent with windows but I can make sense of things with the right tutorial or guidelines but some of this stuff is way above my level of understanding for what i use this machine for.

DBBG · Oct 19, 2025

Thanks to all who replied. I'll eventually figure this out.

DBBG · Oct 19, 2025

glasskuter said:
User profiles are in registry HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList.
Each user profile has a subkey here identified by a long alphanumeric string called a Security Identifier (SID). Inside each SID subkey, the ProfileImagePath value points to the location of the user's profile folder on the hard drive.
You have to open each subkey to find the account name associated with key.

Always backup your registry before making changes.

Thanks for that, the profile does reside in the registry along with the other user profiles as well several others, which I assume are related to hidden admin account, (The built in admin account, not the one I'm looking for)

glasskuter · Oct 19, 2025

Export that entire profile registry key, then delete the profile. If there are any issues your can import it back in.

Spunk · Oct 19, 2025

Search or Press the Windows key +R and type
sysdm.cpl and press enter. Advanced tab
Under User Profiles click the Settings button.
If that user is there select it and and press the Delete button.

Try3 · Oct 20, 2025

On my computers, the SID number ending in 500 is the profile for the Built-in Admn account.

Denis

garlin · Oct 20, 2025

Try3 said:
Your computer name is derek13500
There is no sign of any user account called adminderek13500

If you have a broken user profile (that doesn't allow logons), Windows will sometimes create a temp user profile as [Username].[Hostname] so you can try recovering your old profile. That's probably what happened to the built-in Administrator.

I've never seen it myself, but have read people mentioning it online.

Try3 · Oct 20, 2025

garlin said:
I've ... read people mentioning it online

Interesting.
So there was not [as I had wondered about] a failed attempt to rename the Built-in Admin, just an incident in which it failed to logon successfully.

DBBG said:
the profile does reside in the registry

Have you ever had a failure to log in to the Built-in Admin?
Have you ever tried to do anything unusual with that account such as, but I'm only speculating:
- linking it to an MSAccount - an attempt which it is supposed to reject?
- renaming it?
- applying a password to it?

Is there anything unusual in its properties - look in the response to the cmd
net user Administrator
Here are the properties of mine as an example. Its Full name field is empty, as it should be.

Denis

pseymour · Oct 20, 2025

garlin said:
Windows will sometimes create a temp user profile as [Username].[Hostname] so you can try recovering your old profile

Yep, it will append the name of the domain. If you’re not joined to AD, the computer itself is the domain of which the user is a member. If the problem happens more than once, it starts appending numbers.

Edit: I pulled these profile paths from our inventory. This person likes to do a lot of "tweaking" on devices under their control. Names changed to mask the guilty.

View attachment 149811

Try3 · Oct 20, 2025

There's another case of Administrator.[ComputerName] at

Is It Safe To Delete User Accounts ?

I have recently updated my Dell XPS 8930 desktop and the wife's HP17tby200 laptop to Win 11 25H2. I created New Local Administrator accounts on both computers. Checking the Windows>User accounts I see that I have 6 Users on the XPS desktop and 4 Users on the HP Laptop. It appears to me that...

www.elevenforum.com

Denis

DBBG · Oct 22, 2025

Try3 said:
Interesting.
So there was not [as I had wondered about] a failed attempt to rename the Built-in Admin, just an incident in which it failed to logon successfully.

Have you ever had a failure to log in to the Built-in Admin?
Have you ever tried to do anything unusual with that account such as, but I'm only speculating:
- linking it to an MSAccount - an attempt which it is supposed to reject?
- renaming it?
- applying a password to it?

Is there anything unusual in its properties - look in the response to the cmd
net user Administrator
Here are the properties of mine as an example. Its Full name field is empty, as it should be.
View attachment 149800

Denis

Mine looks similar but the account is active. Still looking in to this. I'm assuming The AdminDerek13500 is the built in account and there is a second I may have activated. The built in account is practically empty but the Administrator account has 35 gb of files sitting in it. I haven't quite had the time to fully research this yet but looking at some leads now.

NormanF · Oct 22, 2025

If your user profile is gone, its not really gone, its a bak. file in the registry.

Look in the Profile List Folder. Examine every entry carefully and delete the one that doesn't have a bak. extension

Rename user profile with a bak. by removing the extension.

Change the D32 ProfileImagePath VALUE data from 1 to 0. Now change STATE from 1 to 0.

Save the changes and reboot your PC. When you reach the login screen, you should be able to login to your user profile.

Try3 · Oct 22, 2025

DBBG said:
I'm assuming The AdminDerek13500 is the built in account

Administrator.AdminDerek13500 is not an account. It's a profile created by an account fault - possibly either at a failed login or during a crash whilst logged in to Administrator.

I'm puzzled. I'm convinced I have seen you post the results of the
Net user
command which lists all accounts but I cannot see it now. Perhaps it was just my imagination.
Do post the results of this command to inform replies and ensure misleading suggestions are not made.
~~I know you've posted the results of Net user Administrator but I thought that the overall Net user results had already been shown.~~
OK, I've got it now. Your original screenshots told us what net user would tell us.

All the best,
Denis

DBBG · Oct 23, 2025

Try3 said:
Interesting.
So there was not [as I had wondered about] a failed attempt to rename the Built-in Admin, just an incident in which it failed to logon successfully.

Have you ever had a failure to log in to the Built-in Admin?
Have you ever tried to do anything unusual with that account such as, but I'm only speculating:
- linking it to an MSAccount - an attempt which it is supposed to reject?
- renaming it?
- applying a password to it?

Is there anything unusual in its properties - look in the response to the cmd
net user Administrator
Here are the properties of mine as an example. Its Full name field is empty, as it should be.
View attachment 149800

Denis

Here's the admin cmd and user list, plus properties of the accounts in question. The AdminDerek13500 is listed in the registry as xxxx 500, which is the code for the MS admin account. So now It's the Administrator account that doesn't appear, as far as I can tell. Could it be leftover from windows 10, before updating to 11? I had my antivirus institute a password change on 2 accounts, one of them was either one of the Admin accounts but i'm not sure which one was done, Admin or adminDerek 13500

Apologies for dragging this out, it seems the more I dig the into this the stranger it gets.

Try3 · Oct 23, 2025

DBBG said:
So now It's the Administrator account that doesn't appear

Yes it does.

You cannot mix up accounts with profiles.
Those folders are associated with accounts but they are folders belonging to profiles; they are not accounts.
Your three accounts are shown in the diagram above.

DBBG said:
Could it be leftover from windows 10

There's no telling when an incident happened that caused the Administrator.AdminDerek13500 profile [& folder] to appear.

DBBG said:
I had my antivirus institute a password change on 2 accounts, one of them was either one of the Admin accounts but i'm not sure which one was done, Admin

You tried to change the password of the Built-in Admin, the account with the username Administrator?
Or are you referring to Derek_AD, dwb-bad?
I have not heard of using an anti-malware utility to change account passwords.

Your Built-in Admin, the account with the username Administrator, is normally disabled. You have enabled yours.
Does it have a password?
I suggest you find out and then disable it again.

All the best,
Denis

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