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Does deleting (removing) a user account delete all the files as well?

I switched computers with someone at work and their user account is still on the computer.

Are these safe to delete without deleting files, which are on a shared drive?

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  • Try it yourself: Create a new user account, log in as them, create a file in the shared drive, log back in as yourself, delete the new user you made. Did the file disappear? Dec 30, 2014 at 21:35

3 Answers 3

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Deleting a User account will delete all folders under \Users\username. enter image description here

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All files in the user profile will be deleted. The user profile is the user name folder in the users folder.

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Deleting a user account will remove the collection of files which are known as the user's profile. This means (on Windows Vista/7/8/8.1), the files under C:\Users\username.

Sometimes, the user profile cannot be deleted because files are in use. Let's say you have a user on your computer called "Bob". Bob's user profile is at C:\Users\Bob.

Bob installs a program on the computer, but either it isn't a very well-written program, or Bob has deliberately installed it somewhere he shouldn't have done. He installs the program to C:\Users\Bob\AcmeSoft\KillerApp. This program starts running as soon as the computer boots, as it works in the background.

A while later, you delete Bob's user account, and Windows dutifully asks if you want to delete their data, too. You say "yes" (obviously), and Windows attempts to remove the user profile. But it can't, because AcmeSoft KillerApp is still running in the background, so the files can't be deleted, and the attempt to delete the profile fails.
This might also happen if:
i) Another program has one of Bob's files open (eg you have MS Word open, and have opened the file C:\Users\Bob\Documents\readme.docx).
ii) Another program runs in the background as a service (or scheduled task), and is configured to run as Bob.
iii) Bob is still logged in to the computer (eg you have fast user switching enabled, and haven't logged Bob off)
iv) Some other piece of software is in the middle of doing something to some of Bob's files. This is most likely to be Anti-Virus.

In this situation, you end up with Bob's user profile (or part of it) being left on the disk, even though Bob's user account has been removed.

One of the culprits for scenario iv is the Windows Search service. Check for event ID 1533 in the Application Log.
If you find it there, you will want to apply the hotfix in Microsoft KB article 2661663; "Stale user profile folders are not deleted completely in Windows 7 or in Windows Server 2008 R2". This hotfix will make Windows retry failed attempts to delete user profiles, rather than just giving up at the first hurdle.

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