Odd User Account Name Results

[InTheWayBoy]

Okay, so I was in a bind and had to load up a laptop using a standard Dell XP SP2 CD. Installation on those is slightly different than a vanilla XP install, but it's very minor tweaks like include CDKEY insertation (WINNT.SIF) and it integrates a few SATA drivers (TXTSETUP.SIF). Using this CD you have to go through the mini-setup as the WINNT.SIF contains no switches other than the CDKEY and a few other odds and ends.

Now here is the odd part, I didn't join the domain during setup so I was going to make a temporary account to do updates and tweaks and then join the domain manually. At the screen where it asks for the user names I decided to use "local" as the user name...why, I don't know.

But when I get to the Welcome screen the only user listed is Administrator...interesting. Where is the "local" account? I log in and go to users and it's not there...not that I mind in the end cause I really would rather do all the tweaks under the admin account anyways, but I didn't have a choice given that the CD wasn't unattended. But it looks like maybe use "local" as the user is some hidden way to bypass user creation? Is this something that everyone already knows and I'm just late to the party?

I don't have time at the moment to verify on another computer, so if someone else want's to try that see what results they get that would be great! I would be happy to list all the changed files that Dell adds to the CD, but from previous attempts it's not much...mostly the extra SATA drivers and the files needed to work the activation thing.

I will try this out later on a VM and see what I get, both with the Dell CD and an original CD to see if it's repeatable. And if this is common knowledge, are there any links that might help explain how/why this works this way? Thanx in advance!

[hosebeast]

Windows has several built-in system accounts which exist on every machine. They are not visible in the UI but their usernames are reserved so you cannot create an account with the same username as any of these. You can use WMI/ADSI scripting to find them.

The fact that OOBE allowed you to enter "local" without giving you an error is a bug in OOBE. If you try to create any of these accounts in Computer Management or the Control Panel User Accounts applet, it will tell you more specifically that the account already exists.

This isn't a complete list, but I believe this is most of them:

Local

Everyone

Builtin

Self

System

Interactive

Batch

Service

Network

Dialup

Proxy

Restricted