Want to get rid of this weird account/user folder

Gondawn · Aug 25, 2023

Hi.

I just did a clean windows 11 re-installation (I had windows 11 before) and noticed that I have this weird folder in my file explorer that matches my name and therefore Microsoft account I use. When it comes to contents of that folder it's just an exact copy of my user folder (my user folder does not have the same name). I really don't want to see it there, especially considering that it displays my real name there and I have to share my screen often.

I can kinda solve this problem by using local account instead and naming it something neutral, but I really would rather continue using my Microsoft account to sign in. I am 100% sure it wasn't there before I reinstalled windows today, so perhaps something can be done about it?

I hope my explanation was clear enough, even though I feel like I didn't explain it in the best way possible

glasskuter · Aug 25, 2023

Welcome to the forum. Check this out. Make sure it applies to what you want.

Add or Remove Home in Navigation Pane of File Explorer in Windows 11 Tutorial

This tutorial will show you how to add or remove Home in the navigation pane of File Explorer for all users in Windows 11. Quick access in the navigation pane of File Explorer (Win+E) allows you to quickly access and view your pinned locations, frequent folders, and recent files from one...

www.elevenforum.com

Gondawn · Aug 25, 2023

glasskuter said:
Welcome to the forum. Check this out. Make sure it applies to what you want.

Add or Remove Home in Navigation Pane of File Explorer in Windows 11 Tutorial

This tutorial will show you how to add or remove Home in the navigation pane of File Explorer for all users in Windows 11. Quick access in the navigation pane of File Explorer (Win+E) allows you to quickly access and view your pinned locations, frequent folders, and recent files from one...

www.elevenforum.com

Thank you. This looks like move in the right direction, but I don't think that's it. I don't want to remove home, on my screenshot you can see that folder is not in home actually, but separate from it

johnlgalt · Aug 25, 2023

One thing to note is that you can use a local account to login to the system, and then still add your Microsoft account(s) to the local login and they will work with the services you need.

@Kari, our resident tutorial guru, referred to it as a Hybrid account, and his tutorial on it is here:

Add Microsoft account to Local account for Hybrid account in Windows 11 Tutorial

A Microsoft account (MSA) is a good choice if a user wants to use the same account on multiple devices, or wants to make it easy to use all / any Microsoft services. Setting up a preinstalled Windows 10 on a new device, after a clean install, or creating a new user on existing Windows...

www.elevenforum.com

glasskuter · Aug 25, 2023

Gondawn said:
weird folder in my file explorer that matches my name and therefore Microsoft account I use.

2 questions
Are your syncing to onedrive?
Have you attempted to move your user folder to a different drive?
On a clean install when using a MS account, I would expect to see a Onedrive folder in the left navigation pane and I don't. Please right click on that folder, select properties, select location tab. What is the full location path of that weird folder?

Gondawn · Aug 25, 2023

glasskuter said:
2 questions
Are your syncing to onedrive?
Have you attempted to move your user folder to a different drive?
On a clean install when using a MS account, I would expect to see a Onedrive folder in the left navigation pane and I don't.

I completely got rid of onedrive and disabled sync that's why there is no onedrive there. I tried changing my account to local and named it "Rosti", so now that folder has the name of my local account instead of my microsoft account name, but it's still there:

Weird part is that like I said inside that folder is the same stuff that I have in my user folder, but it's not a user folder... It's something separate that duplicates my windows account name and serves 0 purpose

glasskuter · Aug 26, 2023

Gondawn said:
...folder in my file explorer that matches my name and therefore Microsoft account I use....... I tried changing my account to local and named it "Rosti", so now that folder has the name of my local account instead of my microsoft account name,

I read this to say you installed Windows with a MS account, you then changed it to a local account, then back to a MS account.(you said in your first statement "I really would rather continue using my Microsoft account to sign in.) Is that a correct statement?

Also per that statement, I am assuming at the present time you are back to signing in with your MS account. or, if not already, that's what you want to do

When you switched from a MS account to a local account in settings, in C:\users the user name would have remained the first 5 letters of your MS account . You can't just arbitrarily rename it and it sounds like that's what you did. To do this properly this is the procedure that should have been used in order to keep the folder association correct. Change Name of User Profile Folder in Windows 11 Tutorial

Maybe someone else has other ideas but here is how I would straighten it out to know for sure that everything is set up as it should be. I am assuming you have a backup of all your files since you clean installed windows. If you don't, make folders on an external drive, and COPY and PASTE your files into them. DO NOT MOVE the files

1. create a new LOCAL account and be sure to give make it an administrator account.

2. Restart and you will see 2 users on signin screen. Login to new account. It will create a new desktop and ask you all the OOBE questions. Do not login to Onedrive.

3. COPY and PASTE files from external drive into new account. It's important to use copy and paste so that permissions do not get messed up.

4. Once you are certain all your files are in place, Delete the old account

5. go to C\Users to verify that ONLY the new account is there. If the Rosti user account still exists, it must be gotten rid of before going further. You can try to delete it but I do not think the system will allow you to. To force renove tthe folder Open a command prompt as administrator and type
rmdir "c:\Users\Rosti" /s /q
Verify the folder is now gone and only the new user account folder remains.

6. Open Task Manager. Under Startup apps section make sure Onedrive is disabled. If it's not, disable it from auto starting

7. Restart and verify for certain Onedrive is not running.

8. In settings, change your local account to a MS account if that's what you want. Even though you will be using a MS account to signin, the account name in C:\users will still be the name you assigned to the local account. Your files will be on your hard drive , not in Onedrive. Since Onedrive is not autostarting, you should not be getting any Onedrive nags.

You will have to setup any options or tweaks you had made before in this new account.

iko22 · Aug 26, 2023

Gondawn said:
When it comes to contents of that folder it's just an exact copy of my user folder (my user folder does not have the same name). I really don't want to see it there, especially considering that it displays my real name there and I have to share my screen often.

Not knowing how the "nested" user folders have occurred, I would first verify how many user accounts you have on the computer, and then verify which User Profile folder they are using.

To find out which user accounts are on the computer, open a cmd window, and type net user and press return. Net user will then list all accounts setup on the computer.

Because Windows 11 user folders are not necessarily named after the user account names, then you have to log on to each user and find the %userprofile% folder***, which can be done in File Explorer:

Open File Explorer, and type %userprofile% into the address bar (including the "%" signs), press return, and File Explorer will automatically update to the current %userprofile% path.

That will verify the paths of each of the valid userprofile paths on the computer. The aim is to find if "Rosti" is still in use by the system. If it isn't you can delete or move it to another location. If it is still in use, then you have to weigh up whether you want to delete the user account, before removing the associated subfolders.

Note: *** You can ignore the administrator account. Don't delete administrator accounts and leave the computer with no administrator. Also ignore Guest and WDAGUtilityAccount.

Gondawn · Aug 26, 2023

glasskuter said:
I read this to say you installed Windows with a MS account, you then changed it to a local account, then back to a MS account.(you said in your first statement "I really would rather continue using my Microsoft account to sign in.) Is that a correct statement?

Also per that statement, I am assuming at the present time you are back to signing in with your MS account. or, if not already, that's what you want to do

When you switched from a MS account to a local account in settings, in C:\users the user name would have remained the first 5 letters of your MS account . You can't just arbitrarily rename it and it sounds like that's what you did. To do this properly this is the procedure that should have been used in order to keep the folder association correct. Change Name of User Profile Folder in Windows 11 Tutorial

Maybe someone else has other ideas but here is how I would straighten it out to know for sure that everything is set up as it should be. I am assuming you have a backup of all your files since you clean installed windows. If you don't, make folders on an external drive, and COPY and PASTE your files into them. DO NOT MOVE the files

1. create a new LOCAL account and be sure to give make it an administrator account.

2. Restart and you will see 2 users on signin screen. Login to new account. It will create a new desktop and ask you all the OOBE questions. Do not login to Onedrive.

3. COPY and PASTE files from external drive into new account. It's important to use copy and paste so that permissions do not get messed up.

4. Once you are certain all your files are in place, Delete the old account

5. go to C\Users to verify that ONLY the new account is there. If the Rosti user account still exists, it must be gotten rid of before going further. You can try to delete it but I do not think the system will allow you to. To force renove tthe folder Open a command prompt as administrator and type
rmdir "c:\Users\Rosti" /s /q
Verify the folder is now gone and only the new user account folder remains.

6. Open Task Manager. Under Startup apps section make sure Onedrive is disabled. If it's not, disable it from auto starting

7. Restart and verify for certain Onedrive is not running.

8. In settings, change your local account to a MS account if that's what you want. Even though you will be using a MS account to signin, the account name in C:\users will still be the name you assigned to the local account. Your files will be on your hard drive , not in Onedrive. Since Onedrive is not autostarting, you should not be getting any Onedrive nags.

You will have to setup any options or tweaks you had made before in this new account.

I am at step 2 and when I try to log into newly created local admin account I see “The User
Profile Service service failed the sign-in. User profile cannot be loaded”

Gondawn · Aug 26, 2023

iko22 said:
Not knowing how the "nested" user folders have occurred, I would first verify how many user accounts you have on the computer, and then verify which User Profile folder they are using.

To find out which user accounts are on the computer, open a cmd window, and type net user and press return. Net user will then list all accounts setup on the computer.

Because Windows 11 user folders are not necessarily named after the user account names, then you have to log on to each user and find the %userprofile% folder***, which can be done in File Explorer:

Open File Explorer, and type %userprofile% into the address bar (including the "%" signs), press return, and File Explorer will automatically update to the current %userprofile% path.

That will verify the paths of each of the valid userprofile paths on the computer. The aim is to find if "Rosti" is still in use by the system. If it isn't you can delete or move it to another location. If it is still in use, then you have to weigh up whether you want to delete the user account, before removing the associated subfolders.

Note: *** You can ignore the administrator account. Don't delete administrator accounts and leave the computer with no administrator. Also ignore Guest and WDAGUtilityAccount.

Result of net user in cdm:

So as you can see it's the only account.

It might be a bit confusing because my user folder is "rosti" and my local acccount name is "Rostislav", so the folder I am trying to get rid of is named "Rostislav". But it actually has nothing to do with my user. If my user remains "rosti" and I rename my account to something like "SteveSmith", then the folder I am trying to get rid of will rename itself to "SteveSmith"

iko22 · Aug 26, 2023

Gondawn said:
So as you can see it's the only account.

What is the result of echo %userprofile% , from a cmd window?

Gondawn · Aug 26, 2023

iko22 said:
What is the result of echo %userprofile% , from a cmd window?

iko22 · Aug 26, 2023

Then the Directory contents should be:
3D Objects, Contacts, Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Favourites, Links, Music, OneDrive, Pictures, Saved Games, Searches, Videos

Anything else has been added by the user, and can be moved, unless some program now depends upon it.

Gondawn · Aug 26, 2023

iko22 said:
Then the Directory contents should be:
3D Objects, Contacts, Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Favourites, Links, Music, OneDrive, Pictures, Saved Games, Searches, Videos

Anything else has been added by the user, and can be moved, unless some program now depends upon it.

I don't really know what to say. That folder was there the moment I logged in after clean installation. I can't delete it

iko22 · Aug 26, 2023

Well, the thing to do is add a document to %USERPROFILE%\Documents and see if the newly created document also appears in the duplicate folder.

Also, check creation date of duplicate folder, and compare that date with the %USERPROFILE% folder.

Gondawn · Aug 26, 2023

iko22 said:
Well, the thing to do is add a document to %USERPROFILE%\Documents and see if the newly created document also appears in the duplicate folder.

Everything I put in my user folder gets duplicated into that one

iko22 said:
Also, check creation date of duplicate folder, and compare that date with the %USERPROFILE% folder.

I can't view creation date of that folder. No properties option. Unless there is another way to check

glasskuter · Aug 26, 2023

Permissions seem to be reversed. If Rotislav is the new account, it appears to me you didn't make it an administrator account when you created it in step 1 above.
To do that, after creating an account, in settings>accounts>select newly created account
To the right of the new user name click down arrow. Select Change account type.
Click arrow to right of standard user and select Administrator.
.. Here's how it should look.

Gondawn · Aug 26, 2023

glasskuter said:
Permissions seem to be reversed. If Rotislav is the new account, it appears to me you didn't make it an administrator account when you created it in step 1 above.
To do that, after creating an account, in settings>accounts>select newly created account
To the right of the new user name click down arrow. Select Change account type.
Click arrow to right of standard user and select Administrator.
.. Here's how it should look.

View attachment 69018

No no. Rostislav is my initial and only account. I just changed it to local account to see if anything would change

glasskuter · Aug 26, 2023

I looked into exactly what WDGUutility account is. It's Windows Defender Application Guard account which is used when private browsing sessions is enabled in Edge. I did not know that so that's a new piece of info for me as I do not use private browsing sessions myself.

I'm sorry but I know of no other advice to give to straighten this out except what I posted in post #7. Any new account created has to have a totally different username than Rotislav.
Hopefully someone else knows some other way.

Gondawn · Aug 26, 2023

glasskuter said:
I looked into exactly what WDGUutility account is. It's Windows Defender Application Guard account which is used when private browsing sessions is enabled in Edge. I did not know that so that's a new piece of info for me as I do not use private browsing sessions myself.

I'm sorry but I know of no other advice to give to straighten this out except what I posted in post #7. Any new account created has to have a totally different username than Rotislav.
Hopefully someone else knows some other way.

I tried what you've mentioned in #7 reply, but like I said I can't go past second stage:

I am at step 2 and when I try to log into newly created local admin account I see “The User
Profile Service service failed the sign-in. User profile cannot be loaded”

Out of the interest, if you go to you file explorer and click show all folders, what do you see there?