Is User Profiles the same as User Names and Accounts?

[AmyR7]

I am trying to understand the differences here on things going on here. Still trying to figure out why I had got locked out of my own computer right before Christmas. I'm afraid that I accidently did something wrong to cause it due to my health not doing well and have had things getting worse and causing my memory and confusion problems too. So, I think by trying to fix other things going wrong, like having problems with accounts on websites I use not working right, that I accidently did something to lock myself out of computer.

See if I right click on the My Computer icon and then left click on Properties
It will say This computer is registered to AmyR
Then has all the other information on the computer.
Then if I click on the Advanced tab, and then under User Profiles section and then the Settings button it brings up a list that has 3 things listed under the
Name column-
Account Unknown
Dell\Administrator
Dell\AmyR
Then it has a size for all of them- the 1st 2 have 35.4MB and the last one has 981MB
Then 2 other columns Type and Status and all say Local and then a Modified column and the 1st one says 5/22/09 the last 2 say 5/24/09

The other thing is that AmyR is names I use on some sites I go to for my username. So, I am not sure if any of that could be some of that somehow because see I use that Saved password thing in the browsers.

I also tried to compare settings to my mom's computer, and hers is a little different and has under the Status column on one of hers says Temp.
We also keep having problems with hacking too, so making sure is any of them suppose to be set differently and that is why someone is hacking in?

Thanks,
Amy

[2x3i5x]

hacking? do you have a firewall and a antivirus protection on?

Comodo firewall is good firewall to use but disable windows firewall first to prevent conflict when two programs attempt to do same job.

[Spoiler]

The user names and who the machine is registered do not have to be the same. They work seperate from each other. Also the profile names and the user names can be differant. In most cases they are the same but the machine can work fine even if they don't match.

Why do you think someone is hacking your machine?

[AmyR7]

The reason I think I was hacked is because of being locked out of my computer.
Yes, I have the Windows Firewall.

[2x3i5x]

The reason I think I was hacked is because of being locked out of my computer.
Yes, I have the Windows Firewall.

Forget windows firewall, many people say it doesn't do its job as well as other ones like that one I mentioned.

[Spoiler]

Please tell us more about being locked out. What happened and how did you get back into your machine?

Just because you got locked out doesn't mean you were hacked. There are other reasons for a machine to lock out an account.

[2x3i5x]

Please tell us more about being locked out. What happened and how did you get back into your machine?

Just because you got locked out doesn't mean you were hacked. There are other reasons for a machine to lock out an account.

which may include you forgetting your password or somebody inadvertently getting your computer into a bad situation.

[AmyR7]

Here is the message that was coming up on the computer.
This computer is in use and has been locked. Only Amy\AmyR (Amy) or an administrator can unlock this computer.
Then it had a place to put in a Username and Password.

My mom called a repairman and he took the computer. We have no idea what he did to get back in. But he said something about finding some spyware. Only other weird thing is that when he left the message came back up, and it changed a little bit, it had the word help added to the list of names, and it somehow had help in the Username box, and nothing for a Password and if I hit Ok, it did let me in, where as before it would not.
I don't remember setting any password for the computer. The only things I have passwords for is my email(which the username for that is not any of those listed in the message above) and all the different websites I go to. One of the usernames, AmyR is actually one that I use for any site I can if the name isn't taken already, if already taken I add numbers to it.
Someone on here actually did help me get that message to go away, if you right click on the Desktop and then click on Properties and then on the Screen Saver tab/button there is something that says On resume, password protect and that was checked. Seems like after I took the check out it did make it go away. I have no idea how this could have got checked either.

Thanks,
Amy

[Spoiler]

The things you are talking about are normal for most machines. Except the spyware. The locking out stuff is a standard Microsoft message of a machine that is in use and locked. The screen saver can cause the lock out as well as other settings in your machine like a group policy. In most cases a home user will have the screen saver set and not know that you need to enter your password to get back into the machine.

Just to be sure you can post a message in the virus and spyware form. They can walk you though a few checks for your machine. Also give you the names of some free anti-virus and spyware programs you may want to load onto your machine for protection.

http://www.computerhope.com/forum/index.php/board,7.0.html

[AmyR7]

The thing is I didn't ever set any password for the computer. 
The only passwords I have is password for my email, and like I mentioned all the different websites I use.

I already have all the different antispyware programs out there. My brother-in-law who knows alot on computers and takes care of all the computer problems at him and my sister house came over the other day and put mostly all the stuff on that this site says to put on and he mentioned he goes on some site Geeks to go  I think is the name. He put them on my mom's computer too since hers keeps having a bunch of problems too. We have stuff like- Updated AVG on our computers, Ccleaner, Malwarebytes, Spywareblaster, Spybot Seach & Destroy, Ad-aware SE Personel, ATF Cleaner, HijackThis we have but he says not to have it actually fix anything though because of problems he and others he knows have had with it causing a big problems after, but says it's ok to keep it and you can easily get a log for sites out there that read them.

[AmyR7]

Another thing my mom just thought to add to this- if this is a normal message, then why have we never seen anything like this before on any of computers in all these years? The computer I have currently is 7 years old, my mom's is like 6 years I think now and none of us have ever seen any messages like this.

[BC_Programmer]

you haven't seen it before because the welcome screen needs to be disabled for it to appear. how that happened I wouldn't know. Possibly an accidental change.

 Additionally, I also have no password on my account. I can lock the machine- and unlocking simply consists of hitting OK without a password.

[2x3i5x]

you haven't seen it before because the welcome screen needs to be disabled for it to appear. how that happened I wouldn't know. Possibly an accidental change.

 Additionally, I also have no password on my account. I can lock the machine- and unlocking simply consists of hitting OK without a password.

same with me, i have no password on my vista pc, if i have lock pc back to the welcome screen, pressing enter would simply unlock it.

[AmyR7]

Yes, when this happend we tried hitting OK, and it still kept coming up with the locked thing.
With what happend, that is why we feel that I was hacked.

What Welcome Screen are you talking about? We don't have any welcome screens that come up on our computers. Everytime we turn it on, everything just comes up- The desktop with all the icons and Start button and everything at the bottom of the screen.

[Spoiler]

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/294317

your screen looked sort of like this.....

www.viu.ca/technology/employees/images/SS.jpg