XP Guest Account

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BruceinFL

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Mar 12, 2005
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How do I completely remove the Guest account from my XP computer. I went to windows explorer and deleted the guest folder but the Guest account is still there when I go to the control panel. It is turned off but I want it gone, gone, gone.
Thanks
 
You can't delete the Guest account in XP, just disable it.  Deleting the Documents and Settings folder won't have any effect on the account.  Windows will just recreate them if the account is ever used.
 
On a side note, I have a mildly interesting story about a student of mine who was about to do a complete reinstall on a working copy of XP in our lab.  Since we were going to completely trash the system, he asked if he could see what would happen if he deleted the registry.  (For those of you who don't know, the registry is a database containing every single configuration item on which the XP installation and its applications depend on including drivers.)  BEFORE I SAY ANYTHING ELSE, UNLESS YOU WANT TO KILL YOUR XP INSTALLATION, DO NOT DO THIS!

First of all, deleting the registry was not an easy feat.  We used regedit, but it still took a while.  Eventually, most everything on the system stopped working, even the keyboard and the mouse.  We did still have video, though, so we stared at it for a second to see if it would implode too.  That was when the scary thing started to happen.  It was like watching Michael Myers come back from the dead.  The registry started rebuilding itself, and within 5 minutes, we had a fully functioning XP installation again.  Of course in another ten minutes we were reformatting the drive for a Linux installation, so we won in the end.

-Dave
 
Dave,
You'll have to excuse me if I take your story with a few (thousand) ounces of skepticism. If you said "Windows self-destructed", that I would believe without question ;D Rebuild itself? I think there's more to this story than you're telling us ;)
 
It's Windows System File Protection at work.  If a system file is deleted, Windows will restore it from a cache.  If you want to see it at work, go to the Windows directory and delete a non-critical Windows file, like notepad.exe.  Watch in Explorer as Windows restores it.
 
No, I didn't say it "self destructed."  We tried to kill it ourselves.  Ned's right in that it caches previous versions from which it can rebuild itself.  We didn't check to see if it brought the application data back to life, but it certainly restored the O/S files.

-Dave
 
Ned,
That I know is sometimes the case, but the key is non-critical file. Deleting the registry and/or its' entries is just courting disaster. If there was an XP or other bootable recovery disc in it at the time and oakcdrom was available, it may be able to bring up a basic system, but a full recovery???
 
Dave, \
I was typing while you were posting. I didn't say it self-destructed, just that I believe it would before I would believe it could resurrect itself from the dead. But you did say
we had a fully functioning XP installation again.
Click to expand...
I guess our definitions of a fully functioning installation are different. Mine is that applications and data function too. Guess I assumed a little too much :)
 
Well, the registry is certainly a critical file :)  And Windows does keep a backup of the registry so it's certainly possible for it to restore it automatically.  However, it's not possible to delete the registry files while Windows is running, so catch 22.

If Windows boots, MS would say it's fully functioning :)
 
Sorry, I didn't mean to start anything.  I just thought it was a cool data point.  Having a teaching lab with 30 hand-me-down computers offers me a great deal of freedom to experiment. If someone says, "Gee, I wonder what would happen if I did ______," I'll say, "Let's go try it!" I was just offering what I thought was an innocent comment.

-Dave
 
Dave,
Not to worry - you didn't start anything; it's just that some of us also have a bit of experience with computers in general and MS in particular, and have come to question some of the capabilities of various o.s.'s. Example: (and I know I may be starting a firestorm here) some people say that Mac's are 'virus-proof'; their statement, not mine. Maybe true, or maybe because hackers don't want to waste their time infecting a relatively small number of computers when they could do more global damage by going after the Windows installations? 
 
MACs are not virus proof, while they are not the target for hackers for the reasons you mentioned they also do not get the publicity when there is a virus since they are in the minority.
 
Back to the original question, someone said it's not possible to delete the guest account, but it can be disabled.  However, the reply did not say how to disable it.  Anyone know?

--pat
 
To disable the Guest account in XP, go to Start|Settings|ControlPanel|UserAccounts. Click on Guest account, then click Turn off the guest account.
 
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