Solved User Account on desktop

Well I made my new user account.

It took me some time to figure out how to not have Edge (they REALLY want you to use it - too bad for them, won't happen , I already have their OS, the rest is for other companies) and to get my Firefox profile with all my open tabs and bookmarks accessible in my new account. I'm really crippled without it.

Good news, I can access all of my pictures on D and the new user account looks OK.
The bumper, of course, is that it will take me hours and hours to get all my preferences back. Pfff. Don't ever mess up your user account. This structure shouldn't exist on a computer that only is used by 1 person (having the possibility to be locked out of your own stuff and moreover it's not logic having to give yourself the right to perform some actions on your own pc - a warning for dangerous operations could suffice...).

I'll let my old user account alone for a while. Who knows what pops up that I still need to fetch there (like my Firefox profile).

Thank you very much Glaskuter and Winuser! You saved my day!

Well, I got a long way in setting up things the way they were in my new account. So far so good until....

I copied my (very) old Outlook.pst file (<2009 or so...) onto my laptop (in docs folder). It had been stored on a separate USB stick. I stopped using Outlook years ago. I emigrated a couple of times and that made gmail easier as it is not location/provider related. I probably took it of my pc to free up space (it's a big file and my previous laptop was lacking space) and since I don't use Outlook any longer, this archive was a good choice. The messy account must have been as such since I wanted to look up some very old emails in this old archive (some months ago) and put it on my machine. I must have taken it off again, as it wasn't there nor on my external HDD when I made the back-up this week. Only on the USB.

As soon as I copied this file to Documents, my (new) user account, which so far had been looking OK, popped up again under my Desktop. It looks quite the same as before but there is a difference: both accounts are located at C:\Users\ and both contain all the folders (previously the "real" account only contained AppData, whereas the one under desktop had all the folders/files.

Well I guess I didn't get this problem from opting out of a MS account and setting up a non MS account when I set up this laptop, but from putting a pst file on my machine (or in the wrong place?). But the double Documents I had in Libraries in my previous user account is no longer there in this new account, so something else must have gone wrong at some point in time too with my previous user account.

I'll start all over again with yet a new account, hoping that this time all will go OK. It would sure be handy to have a (pro)file that would store all of ones preferences. Very time-consuming.

TBH this makes absolutely no sense to me, but weird stuff never does. Only relationship I could see possible is if you opened this old .pst file in Office 365 Outlook which is tied to a MS account. Pay me no mind here as I'm drawing at straws in my speculation. Now that you are starting over, get rid of that old .pst file. However, you now have me wondering if you EVER use any part of Office 365 with a local account would result in the same thing happening again. Since I do not use 365 (and never will) that is the first thing I remove when I install Windows. I use my local Office 2021 application instead. There are a lot of people here who do use 365. Maybe they can verify if it results in the creation of a desktop 'user' account.

Glasskuter, forget about my post about Outlook.
I just created a new account and it happened again.

Judiver said:

I just created a new account and it happened again.

Click to expand...

Whaaat???Is it the "jmver" account it's recreating on the desktop?Right click on it and look at properties.
There's got to be something you copied from your old account into the both the second and third account you created. Was it there as soon as you got to the desktop immediately after creating the account?

Judith, I took a quick look at this thread and I don't think that what you are referring to as your "user account" on the desktop is really what you think it is.

Are you by any chance simply referring to a folder that has your username on it?

If so, please try taking a look at this:

Open Settings > Personalization > Themes > Desktop icon settings

You should see something like this:



Uncheck the box that says "User's Files".

Let me know if I'm barking up the wrong tree.

Glasskuter, no that is not what I meant. The account doesn't show up on the desktop but under desktop in File Explorer, as per my screenshot at the beginning of this threat.

I think I found it (beware that I'm not saying anything impossible again like with Outlook). In File Explorer, you have the option to "Show all folders" (in Navigation pane).
When I check that box, my user account appears under Desktop.
When I uncheck it, that account is gone (as it should be).

Was it as simple all along??? Lot's of work, bothering this forum, while it was just a "legal" operation that made the account pop up in this strange place. The "Show all folders" makes your recycle bin visible, which I find useful. It also makes Libraries pop up, even if you leave "Show Libraries" unchecked. Not logic.

Not all time/effort is wasted though, the new account fixed the other problem (double doc in libraries), and who knows what else... Sometimes it good to start fresh.

Good for @hsehestedt for leading you in that direction. It never crossed my mind. That was definitely part of the problem as far as desktop, but not the reason your old MS account (jmver) is still lurking around. After you get everything set and your old account removed, PLEASE PLEASE tell me that jmver is GONE because it is somehow tied to your old account and onedrive.

I agree, why oh why, can't it be as simple as in the old days, where a flippin' MS account hadn't been invented yet. If you read enough on this forum you will find my opinion on using one. But I'm old school compared to most here, so you have to take my rantings with a grain of salt.

I was just writing my comment about "show all folders" when @hsehestedt's post came in. Our messages almost crossed, I already had hit the button "post reply". Going fast, to add to my message that it was not on my desktop, I didn't see the post came from hsehestedt and not glasskuter. Sorry hsehestedt!

As I said it is good something to clean things up by starting new, even if you spend a lot of time on it. But hey, I'm now a pro in setting up a new account. Already things go a lot faster.

Glasskuter, rant please rant. I am more than old school. I can make a veeeeery long post with all my grief. In short: We're are imposed to have things (and updates) we don't need, and which don't make our lives more simple (unless all tech goes smoothly but that's wishful thinking), be online 24/24, be available 24/24 and have our personal info+stuff+life online from a to z. And we're directed to be all alike and not to think for ourselves, as big companies know better what we want than we. I should not say this here... as there are people here who like finding solutions, like to think creative and moveover are willing to help. Lucky me!

Yes I will give an update after I install all and having deleted the old Judith .

glasskuter said:

TBH this makes absolutely no sense to me, but weird stuff never does.

Click to expand...

Same thing I'm thinking. @Judiver, this time make a backup image before making any changes.

Hi I'm back... with an update.

I made a backup image (as per Winuser's advice), but hope not to need it. Then I deleted my old Judith user account.

The jmver account is gone (at last, I for sure never named any account this way, so I guess it was made automatically by MS when I first set up this laptop and backed out of creating a MS account).

The old judith is still there under c:/users with only the AppData folder. Can I delete that manually???
In FE, when I click options, view, show all folders (the reason why I actually started this thread as it gave me such a messy view) I only see my new account under Desktop. The old Judith account (with all the folders) is no longer there.

To come back to our previous conversation about 365: I do use 365, but I didn't recognize that name. I always called it 'Office'. In fact, wááááy back, when I went from a previous version (was it in Windows95?) to the (then) new Office 12 (Excel 2007), Microsoft had moved everything around. I was really lost, frustrated, for months. Then there was Office 14, but I was not really eager to change again. Now with Windows10/11 there's yet a new package again, but I am reluctant to upgrade my files:
a) fear that MS has moved everything around again / changed the looks of everything again, so you don't recognize things you do not use that often
b) I read about problems (slow, failures, copying vertical instead of horizontal etc.)

I actually hate updates. Why change something that is perfectly OK, like excel? I don't need it to look fancy, I want to do things quickly. And if technology progresses, why not add the new features but keep the rest as is (as much as possible). It's like going to your supermarket with a long list of groceries. Instead of the shop adding goji berries and vegan burgers, it has moved around all of their departments. It takes you the whole afternoon to get all that's on your list, asking personnel etc. Six months later you may still ignore where to find your gazpacho (which you may not buy that often) because they moved it from veggies to the juices. And then, looking in the right spot you don't see it because your brand of gazpacho decided to change the looks of their packaging. You're lost, you don't care for the shop to have gone through a face lift, you just want your caddie with the stuff that's on your list, asap.
Typewriters had buttons, in WordPerfect you had to have an excellent memory to remember the numerous key combinations. Then came Windows with winword and we had drop down menus (yes!), now we have reduced menus, key combinations again and buttons because we can't read any more and pc's need to look like mobile phones. It's like fashion: the same things come back 30 yrs later...

Going back to those emails in Outlook, I am for sure not going to delete that file, as it contains my correspondence with my now deceased mother. If I delete that file and upgrade to Outlook anno 2022, all may be gone forever. I was still able to access my email in that 365 pst file although some emails were corrupt. Also, since my jmver account now is gone, and hasn't come back (also not with opening a 365 excel file), accessing 365 apparently has nothing to do with that strange jmver account. My best guess is that it was MS's doing in setting up this laptop.

A couple of questions that have nothing to do with the topic, but with W11 in general.
As you are the W11 experts.... I also find W11 is slow (the calculator takes 3 to 4 seconds to pop up, excel is slow too, as if it is thinking..., and my old 365 version did not do that in W10). My searches on my browser are now autocompleted, which is really not practical especially if you're using more than one language (pc set up in English, but if I type something in French it 'corrects' it to English). FE now sorts by date (which you can change, luckily, as I couldn't find the right file, over and over again), but other programs (I have a non MS picture editor) do that as well (and there I cannot opt out to just have an alphabetical list). Do these observations have anything to do with W11?

Judiver said:

The old judith is still there under c:/users with only the AppData folder. Can I delete that manually???

Click to expand...

Yes it is safe to delete it but windows won't let you just delete it. Besides it needs to be removed from registry as well. Try this to delete the C:\users\judith folder. How To Delete User Profile in Windows 10

Judiver said:

I also find W11 is slow

Click to expand...

My calc open immediately. If things are slow, right click on your start button and open task manager to see what is hogging your resources.(cpu and ram specifically) It makes it easier to discover the heaviest users of resources if you click at the top of each column which sorts the heaviest users to show first.

Your cpu runs at only 1.8 ghz unless you have Intel Turbo Boost turned on. 1.8 ghz is pretty slow. With turbo boost your cpu can run up to 4.0 ghz. You can verify if turbo boost is on by going to Power Options( right click battery icon), select High Performance Power plan and the turbo boost will be enabled. Realize when doing this your fan will be louder as it will have to work harder to maintain cooling. It's a good idea to monitor your temps if you feel the laptop getting hot. I run a little app called Core Temp to monitor mine. You can see temperature fluctuations with varying workloads in real time in your system tray.

Judiver said:

excel is slow too

Click to expand...

I Can't help you with 365 as I don't use it but excel would probably be slow if turbo boost is off since it does a lot of calculations.

Judiver said:

my browser are now autocompleted

Click to expand...

Howto for each browser here. https://support.iclasspro.com/hc/en...e-or-Clear-AutoFill-AutoComplete-Information-

Judiver said:

other programs (I have a non MS picture editor) do that as well

Click to expand...

Things like that in 3rd party apps have nothing to do with Windows 11. The apps control whether or not you can sort your files or change from icon view to list view, etc.

Hi Glasskuter,

Thank you for reacting. I just had a look at one thing.

I use Firefox and the options mentioned didn't help for the auto-completion of the address bar. It probably cleared lots of data though and lead the way to the solution, not in Privacy & Security but Search:

• Click on the Firefox menu icon. (3 lines at top right of screen)
• Click on "Settings."
• Choose "Search"
• Deselect "Provide search suggestions"
• Click on "Change preferences for search engine suggestions"

At least when I type "phi" and hit enter, I get the number "phi" now and not some company called phillipskop.co.za...

Nothing to do with W11, but you really have to search how to get the things you want nowadays as devices decide, complete and/or 'correct' for you, based on your location/language/preference settings (I didn't change the latter, didn't even know it was there... must have been an update again...). Especially if you're using more languages (on pc and phone) and do not necessarily want results from the country you live in or the language you use to set up the device. Really complicated nowadays...

I'll look into the rest tomorrow, I hope. The alarm goes off at 5h30... so my evening is ending. I'm not going into the registry now...

Sorry for the late reaction. I've been busy/too tired.

I deleted what was left of the old Judith account manually. AppData and subfolders were empty by the way and this account no longer showed up in the Registry. So I suppose there are no remaining files left associated with it.

Turbo boost : I had to look because I couldn't find "high performance". The power setting menu has changed with W11... In Power mode I now have "best power efficiency" (formerly "eco"), "balanced" and "best performance", but I don't want to put it to best performance. I read somewhere can reduce gpu life-span and I sometimes use my laptop without the power cord on my lap. It will heat. I've always have had it on balanced. It should boost when I need to, not all the time.

Task manager shows a long list of items (5 scroll downs), I wonder whether that is normal. I have no recollection of it being so long (I don't look at it very often, I admit). Firefox is using a lot of memory (I have lots of tabs open), but nothing is really using a lot of CPU. Firefox is listed multiple times as is Service Host and some other items. I closed Edge half an hour ago but it still shows with 94Mb memory (I never use Edge, but wanted to get rid of Bing, didn't succeed even in eliminating all search engines but Google, I still get Bing, in French, with lots of pics flickering/scrolling, sooooo annoying - in fact I only use Edge as a "back-up" browser, should there ever be a problem with Firefox). 94MB whereas Edge has no tabs, no bookmarks, no profile, no nothing, all sync blocked. So why is it using 94Mb???

What else could cause some items appear to be slow? I've noticed calc sometimes opens correctly and sometimes it hangs for a couple of secs. The speed is not constant. Haven't noticed any slowing down with Excel this week (my reference is the same file that I use a lot). Firefox may be slow at times, but that can be internet speed, lots of tabs open etc.

No reaction to my last post, but it was not very relevant to W11 (I guess) or the reason why I started this thread.
My messy FE appearance/user account under desktop and the strange jmver user account have been adressed, thus my problems have been solved. I would like to thank you all for your time and help, especially Glasskuter.

Judiver said:

Task manager shows a long list of items (5 scroll downs)

Click to expand...

Yep, it's overwhelming, isn't it. A lot of that junk I don't know what is and haven't looked into very much unless I see something running out of control. I monitor to make sure nothing is overloading my ram and cpu, but there's not a lot one can do about all the Windows processes if one wants to use all its features. You can make it a little shorter by disabling what programs you don't want to start automatically with windows. In task manager, click the startup tab and right click the items you want to disable. This might help a little, but not much. The change does not take effect until you restart.

Judiver said:

Firefox is using a lot of memory (I have lots of tabs open

Click to expand...

Yes, and so does Edge. I believe Chrome does it as well but I don't have it installed in order to check myself. Unlike early days, every browser runs multiple instances. Each of the tabs is a process, so is the extension or anything else that is running with the primary process.
Using Edge as an example with 5 tabs open I run 21 processes. For each tab I close and each extension I disable it drops a process.
With 1 tab and no extensions I still end up with 10 processes running.

If you want to limit FF to how many processes it can run at one time you might take a look at this article. However, if you run multiple tabs all the time it might affect FF performance. I have plenty of ram and cpu power so I decided to leave mine alone until it becomes a problem.

Judiver said:

What else could cause some items appear to be slow? I've noticed calc sometimes opens correctly and sometimes it hangs for a couple of secs. The speed is not constant.

Click to expand...

Many factors. IMO, your 8 gb of ram is limiting you. I can't say for sure without seeing your task manager. This is where the high performance power plan can also help, but you are right. With laptops it is not suggested to use high performance but use balanced instead. Another IMO here, 8 gb is the minimum ram where 11 can operate at any level of efficiency. I know a lot of people try to run 11 on 4gb, but I do not know how. If you want your performance boosted, add more ram.

Using my own computer as an example: I have a very powerful PC which I run in high performance, but I'm not really a power user. Though I have 10 cores and 20 threads my PC never goes into hyperthreading. I do very little other than using the web (hardly ever over 4 tabs at a time), maybe a word document or 2 (never spreadsheets) Right this second I have 2 tabs open in FF and no other programs are open. My task manager shows I'm using 28% of my ram (I have 32 gb) That's 8 1/2 gb of ram in use and I'm not doing diddly squat. So you can see where 8 gb ram limits people.

I'm glad you got your account mess resolved. Thank you for you kind words.

Hi Glasskuter, and others following this post.

I get back to my ranting about updates and features (sorry!). I'm a simple user too. I use internet a lot/all the time, excel daily, some photo processing, word and a(n old offline) game, but that's about it. None of all the new MS features, no cloud, no videos/tv, no social media, not synced to mobile devices or other. I try to keep my doings/back-ups offline as much as possible. I bought this laptop in July 2019, so (only) 3 years ago and at that time it was obviously was not a top notch highly powerful machine, but a lot better than first price. It was more than I needed for the simple user I am. It should easily be able to do the simple stuff I do with it. Three years for me is VERY recent, considering my hifiset is 28 yrs old, my tv 25yrs, my washing machine 22yrs, same for my previous car: 22yrs. I try to stick as long as possible to my good old reliable stuff that date from a period when items were still produced/meant to last.

In the past I've been buying (needed to buy...) a new machine when a new version of Windows got too big for it to handle (slowing it down/crashing and using up all the space) and this practice still seems to continue, unfortunately. An ever bigger, if not huge, OS for the same things I did 10, 20 years ago. It feels like needing to buy a sky scraper whereas I only need a tiny wooden shack for my stuff. Buying a whole industrial complex (indeed complex, with user and admin accounts I don't need, a network I don't need, folders I don't need, apps and features I don't need etc.), whereas I only need a coffee machine with an on/off button. Firefox is using an enormous amount of memory (some 2200MB), but it only uses 2.5-5% CPU. Total CPU use is around 6-10%, GPU 1-3%, but total memory use is 75%, so that might indeed be the culprit (all those numerous OS services of which I have no clue what they are or do). As with new office packages which in my eyes were unnecessary, I think I will be reluctant to install a future W12: it can only be bigger, with task mngr increasing to 10 scroll downs... forcing me yet again to buy a new machine (which I do not need for what I do with it).

In creating a new account I uninstalled 20 to 30 apps (used to be called programs, but times change...) straight away, another 10 deleted from startup (as you cannot uninstall them). Formerly you had to be aware of malware getting unknowingly installed with other programs, now you need to be aware of a huge amount junk getting unknowingly installed with official MS packages. My startup has 5 items, the rest is disabled. I really try to "strip" my laptop as much a possible, I like it clean, simple and uncluttered, my personal files in a section organized my way, but it really is a fight as you don't know what all the stuff is / if you can uninstall/delete/disable it.

Oh well, even if I don't like where it's going, I can't stop progress. But I would like to be able to only adopt new things I think useful, and preferably without loss of data (and time). I'm not sure if present day kids will still have pictures of their grandparents they can access/look at. I do, they are on paper. Unfortunately my mother knew how to type. At some point in time her emails will be gone.

Thanks again for your time and help. I appreciate it.

Judiver said:

excel daily, some photo processing,

Click to expand...

Both intensive ram users + lots of tabs to add to it. If I'm looking at the right specs for that laptop, it looks like you can run a max of 16gb ram. To know for sure you can go to crucial.com and run its scan. Adding ram is one of the cheapest and most beneficial way a user can improve performance.

Good luck in your Windows 11 journey. You've been a pleasure to work with.

Likewise Glasskuter.

By the way, as far as FF is concerned, the first option (limit the content process to 1) is no longer available in my FF version (102), but the second option (changing the config value to false) helped. It appeared I had no less than 32 instances (sic !) of FF in my task mgr, I now only have 1 and my RAM usage dropped to 59%. FF is running much faster now and I suppose with the extra processor capacity gained I will have no more strange slow downs for calc, excel etc. Thanks for the tip!

One addition to my last post about FF, as I don't want to give people false hope.

Setting the config value to false didn't solve the multiple process problem after all.
Going forward, Multi-process can't be turned off anymore in Firefox - gHacks Tech News

I tried creating an environment variable MOZ_FORCE_DISABLE_E10S=1
see
How do I stop Multible firefox processes from running? They are using up all my memory. | Firefox Support Forum | Mozilla Support
or
You can't turn off e10s (Multi-Process) in Firefox 68
but that doesn't help either.

I haven't found a solution, not sure there is one (FF overrides all). You can have as much as 10 Firefox processes going on with only 1 tab open, especially if you have add-ons like an add blocker. Ridiculous. Modzilla says it makes FF more stable and ensures safety. Well, it makes my computer to slow down (overall, in using other programs), hanging several secs on opening/reloading a new tab, etc. FF is using an enormous amount of RAM with its multiprocessing, and now that W11 has gotten bigger (with xxxx processes as well), it really affects my computer. From surfing the web to find a solution, I learned that I'm not the only one that is experiencing this. One minor computer problem (or other research you do on the internet) and you have 10 tabs open > 100 processes... come on ! Computer developers may have very powerful machines with lots of RAM and for them all works fine, but the simple home users don't.

I just thought it was useful to add this comment, should anyone have the same problem and thought that setting the config value to false was a solution.