Okay, I have just stumbled across a bizarre situation. A while back I made an account for my rommate on my computer. After running a permissions repair all of the accounts except for mine were turned off, and I haven't gotten around to turning them back on until now. When I go into User Accounts it only shows my account and Guest. So I clicked "Create New Account", and named it my roommates name, as I did before. What is strange is that it tells me that her account already exists! But it is not showing. Does anyone know what is going on? I have never heard of this happening before.
It's actually about creating a hidden account but maybe it will help you figure out what's causing the problem.
Normally when you log into XP, you see the startup screen where you see all the icons for the users who can access. What this tip does is allow you to hide a desired account from this screen. If you want to log on as this user you have to press Cntrl+Alt+Del twice at the Welcome screen to make a Windows Security dialog box appear. Here you can type in the user name and password of the hidden account and log in.
There's more info in this article including how to find any hidden accounts.
To access the other User Accounts control section, type control userpasswords2 from the command line or in the Run dialog box (and press Enter or click OK). The dialog that appears will list all the available users on the computer and provides you with some other controls:
First, are you an Administrator? If you are then log on, open the start menu, go to Administrative Tools, then open Computer Management, and then there should be a folder called Local Users And Groups. It has all the users on your computer listed in it. Please feel free to e-mail me if you need anything else
Well Hot Damn! The account user is listed there. If I delete it from there can I recreate it in User Accounts, because it still doesn't show up in User Accounts.
I deleted the account in Comp Mngmt, then it allowed me to rename the Guest account my roommate's name. I still wish that I knew what happened, but oh well. It's still a bit of a mystery to me.