Windows – How to delete domain user profile from a computer

active-directoryuser-accountswindows

I'm wondering how to safely remove a domain user profile from a computer that is a part of a domain. I don't want to delete the account from the domain itself, I just need to remove the profile from this computer, to do some cleanup.

I'm currently on a Vista Business computer, but we also have Win XP Pro and Win 7 Pro.

Best Answer

Method 1 (easy and safe)

  • Open up "Control Panel | System and Security | System"
  • In the dialog click on "Advanced system settings" (requires Admin rights)
  • The "System Properties" dialog will be displayed
  • Make sure you are in the "Advanced" register
  • In the "User Profiles" section click on "Settings"
  • The "User Profiles" dialog is displayed
  • Select the account. Hit Delete.

Method 2 (slight variation of method 1)

  • Start | Run
  • sysdm.cpl
  • switch to register "Advanced"
  • In the "User Profiles" section click on "Settings"
  • The "User Profiles" dialog is displayed
  • Select the account. Hit Delete.

The greyed out button possibly means that the registry hive has not been released by the operating system, as pointed out by @joeqwerty in the comments.

Method 3 (manual and prone to errors)

Delete the C:\Users\[ACCOUNT] directory. That leaves some registry entries behind that have to be manually deleted as follows.

  • Open Regedit with Administrator Permissions (Runas Administrator)
  • Select the HKEY_USERS branch
  • Search for the Domain Account without the domain (e.g. login = DOMAIN\ACCOUNT then search for ACCOUNT)
  • Keep on searching until the status bar shows Computer\HKEY_USERS\[SID]\Software\Microsoft\Windwos\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders
  • There should be a large list of your ACCOUNTs folders e.g. C:\Users\ACCOUNT\Desktop

You are in the right HKEY_USERS\[SID]\Software\Microsoft\Windwos\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders branch if the ACCOUNT in "Shell Folders" matches the ACCOUNT you just manually deleted form the C:\Users\[ACCOUNT] directory. This branch [SID] can be exported and/or deleted to clean up the last of the user profile.

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