What A Mess- User Accounts

[stumble]

I had a problem this morning and have spent the last 4 1.2 hours trying to solve it  but I am gettng deeper and deeper into trouble.  This is Windows XP Home.

Firefox would't come up on my screen. I tried loading it up in Firefox safe mode and Windows safe mode but that didn't help.   Task Manager said it was, but I couldn't see it.

So I created a second user account.  Funny, but that user account never comes up a a choice, so I tunned on the guest account.   I needed to download a program but the guest account had no administrative privlidges so I couldn't  load it after I downloaded it.  I  So I gave the second account administrative privlidges, which removed it from my "real" account.   Now the progrm refuses to load in the guest acocunt, and the the real account still won't load windows.  You may suggest I use IE, which is what I'm doing now,  but what I'm doing requires another thing that doesn't work on IE, Safari or any other IE related progam.  I have tried system restore and that did'nt help, as did not unstalling and reinstalling Firefox. 

How can I get  administrative rights back on my real account and delete the guest account and the other account that dosen't show?

Sandy
 

[contrex]

I once had Firefox refusing to run, and I had to delete the Firefox user profile. It survives a Firefox uninstall/reinstall.

It seems to be a fairly common bug.

A profile in Firefox is a collection of bookmarks, browser settings, extensions, passwords, and history; in short, all of your personal settings. These items are stored in a special profile folder on your hard drive. Each user has one of its own.

In Windows XP, it is located as follows:

C:\Documents and Settings\<User Name>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxxxxx.default\

The xxxxxxxx is simply a collection of 8 random numbers and characters, used to ensure that each profile is unique. Firefox automatically creates this. When Firefox is in use, it locks the active profile to keep other programs from altering the contents or causing conflicts. This lock is normally transparent to the user, but sometimes the profile remains locked when it's not expected.

You may not have to actually delete the profile, you may only need to delete a file called parent.lock which may be in your profile folder.

So I suggest you follow these steps (They may work)

Give your regular user account its admin privileges back.

Log in to that account and do not start Firefox.

Check in Task Manager that Firefox is not running.

Look in the profile folder for that user and see if parent.lock is present. If it is, delete it.

Now try running Firefox.

If it does not run, you could try the scattergun approach of backing up everything in the profiles folder (by copying it all to another folder) and then deleting everything. If Firefox starts up OK, then you could copy back your bookmarks.htm file, etc.



For a discussion of the "Firefox Profile In Use Bug" see here

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_in_use

and here

http://www.talkgold.com/forum/r117316-.html

and here is a detailed account of how to create and use a new user profile using Firefox Profile Manager

http://www.borngeek.com/firefox/profile-tutorial/

[stumble]

Thank you.  I now have a workable Firefox but I guess I still don't have installation rights.  Setup fatal error:  Unable to generate installation log file.

Sandy

[contrex]

What software are you trying to install? Are you logged in with Admin rights?

[stumble]

I downloaded mouse and key recorder and can't load that.  But it's worse.  I can't move anything off it to another computer to prepare to formate it and start over so I loose all that - including my genealogy.

I do not have administrator rights and I can't get administrator  rights.  I gave it to guest and guest wasn't allow to have it.    My account is now limited as is guest.

My computer has no administrative rights and I can't network, I can't restore and I can't run System Mechanic.

Sandy

[contrex]

I don't understand why you cannot log in as administrator. How did you "give" admin rights to guest? Have you set admin password?

[patio]

Try This

[stumble]

It says:

"How to take ownership of a folder Note You must be logged on to the computer with an account that has administrative credentials. If you are running Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition, you must start the computer in safe mode, and then log on with an account that has Administrative rights to have access to the Security tab."

I do not have any administrative credentials on that computer.

[contrex]

I do not have any administrative credentials on that computer.

Why not? Every PC has an admin account. I do not see how you could have lost them.

So I gave the second account administrative privlidges, which removed it from my "real" account.

How did it do that?

PS it's "privileges"