How to remove a “not a member of the local group” user in Windows XP Home

Aug 27, 2013 | OSes, Recent, tips-n-tricks, Windows

You receive the following error when you try to delete a local user account in Windows XP Home:

[text]Remove Domain Name\Computer Name.
Error 1377: The specified account name is not a member of the local group.
Error removing Domain Name\Computer Name.[/text]

This may be due to a corrupted user profile and usually occurs when a user account has been added/removed to various user groups or may be also caused by using a password reset utility like NT Password Editor.

A solid fix to this problem:

1. Log-in to Safe Mode using the local Administrator account.
2. Go to Run and execute the command:
   [bash]control userpasswords2[/bash]
   This will fire up the Control Panel item for user accounts management not normally available in the Home Edition.
3. Select and delete/remove the corrupted user profile.

Note: The local folder is not being deleted, only the user account. Delete the folder manually if needed.