The DELETE button in the User Profiles section of System Properties can be greyed out for three reasons:
- Profile in Use: If the user for that profile is still signed in, you can’t delete it. This can happen if:
- the profile for the user you’re currently signed into cannot be deleted
- someone has used “Switch User” instead of signing out completely
- this is an RDS server and multiple users are signed in
- System Default Profile: If the profile is a system default profile, it’s not meant for deletion
- Group Policy or Registry Issue: Sometimes, the greyed out delete option may be due to Group Policy settings
If none of these are your issue, the registry hive may not have been released by the operating system when a user attempted to logout so try rebooting the computer.
Alternately, you just be wrong and the profile is not LOCAL… double check the TYPE column.
2 Comments
Ron · October 8, 2024 at 2:45 pm
I’m seeing a number of Windows 10 and 11 systems I manage (mostly HP EliteBooks) where the Delete button for _all_ profiles is grayed/disabled! It doesn’t matter if I reboot, etc. If I boot to Safe Mode, the Delete button is no longer grayed/disabled for other user profiles. When booted normally, if I use handles64.exe from Sysinternals, I can see several registry-related (e.g. ntuser.dat) files are locked by the System (pid 4). I suspect some service/agent/driver we use is causing this. I may need to experiment with selective startup to identify the service(s), etc., that cause this.
Ian Matthews · October 10, 2024 at 8:35 am
Great details and insite Ron. Thanks for sharing!