Well, I logged in as Admin and deleted the user profile's ntuser.dat file (backed it up first). Then proceeded to reboot into Windows. The user profile basically become 'unrecognisable' to the OS, and a new username/accouunt was automatically created. It was basically a copy of the previous profile, only all settings were refreshed and the orginal profile remained in the documents and settings folder.
So, I was able to delete the ntuser.dat file, only it caused problems which I would rather have not gone thru. It appears not much is known about the ntuser.dat file. Finding decent information on it is rather tedius. Even asking so called 'experts'.
is difficult to wipe the 'ntuser.dat' file of built-in accounts like the Administrator. You might be able to reassign the built-in to another privileged account with the Policy Editor. Try it and report whether it works
Yep, I tried this. Also recieved the same problem with Windows not recognising the profile and creating another one.
I also find it very off that the ntuser.dat file needs to store random/miscellaneous information in it. Even of deleted files. I wasn't able to find out why it does this, maybe you could shed some light on this, dajhorn? I don't think many 'cleaner software' developers know about the ntuser.dat file. I haven't seen anything that is able to clean it or mention it in their FAQs...