User Account Changed - can't change it back

[MarkRG]

Hi all, hoping someone can point me in the right direction here.

I have a standard i7 workstation running Win10PRO (fully updated) with a single user account. The system is password protected.

Earlier today friend needed to chase up a missing order from Microsoft and, while talking to their sales support people, was asked to log into her windows account. She did this using my computer. The screen background changed to her photos but all my icons and applications remained in place. She was able to do what was needed and then logged out of her account. I restarted the computer at this point. When it came back to the login screen it listed only her account and waited for her password. No other accounts were available.

We logged in and tried to switch users: again, no other account available. I can create a new user account and this will then appear as an option at the login screen. However, it doesn't have my user profile so isn't much use.

I tried going back to an earlier restore point, but even with antivirus and firewalls turned off, restore fails.

I'm running out of ideas now. I need to get rid of this 'squatter' user account and have my own back in it's place but can't see how.

Any ideas?

Mark

 

[Trouble]

Hello and welcome to the forum.
IF the original account was a local account you might try.....
Going into Settings -> Accounts -> Sign in with a local account instead

For your protection you may want to create another Local Account as a member of the local Administrators Group or enable the hidden Administrator account before going forward, just in case things don't work out as planned.

 

[MarkRG]

Thanks for your suggestion. I tried going into Settings> Accounts and then signing in with a local account but again, the only account available was my friends. It's worth saying that she didn't previously have an account on my computer. She normally uses an ASUS netbook and lives many tens of miles away. Oddly, I changed my screen background last night back to what I usually have and the background on her ASUS also changed. I guess this was because I was using my computer after logging in using her credentials - the only option given to me.

I logged into her windows account and found my computer listed as one of the devices. I removed this so it was no longer listed and then signed out and restarted my machine. No change; the only option available was to log in using her credentials. It seems I have to reinstal windows to completely clear her account from the computer, However, given that I went from win 7 to 10 under the free upgrade process offered by Microsoft, I'm not sure how easy this will be to do. Where do I reinstall Windows 10 from?

There is another one other option I could try: to create a new user account with admin rights (I've checked and am able to do this) and then copy over my old user profile after which, I delete her account from the computer. Copying user profiles seems to be well documented so it might be worth a try - or am I opening a can of worms doing that?

M