Help?

[Julsey]

So I bought a new laptop to replace the old one that hadn’t worked well for several years. The old laptop… Somehow, in the very beginning, I set up two different user accounts: administrator and non-administrator. I didn’t want 2, but didn’t know what to do, so just lived with it. Last week, when I finally got around to trying to set up the new laptop, it indicated that I could transfer information from my old laptop, and asked if I wanted to proceed. Of course, I told it to go ahead. Here’s the problem: it transferred only the administrator side of things, but most of my information is under the other username. I have Carbonite, so can download documents, but is it also going to download both user accounts? Should I reset the new laptop back to factory settings and start all over so I don’t have to do anything else? Do I know what I am doing? Absolutely not!

[Mike047]

Short answer first: no, you probably don’t need to factory-reset — and Carbonite will not recreate user accounts by itself. You can fix this cleanly with a bit of targeted cleanup.

 

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What likely happened:

• Your old laptop had two Windows user accounts:

  • one Administrator

  • one Standard (non-admin) — where most of your real files lived

• During setup of the new laptop, Windows’ transfer tool:

  • only migrated the Administrator account

  • ignored the other user profile

• Result: your new laptop looks “empty” because your files are still tied to the other username.

This is annoying, but recoverable 👍

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About Carbonite

Carbonite:

• ✅ backs up files and folders

• ❌ does NOT restore Windows user accounts

• ❌ does NOT recreate permissions, profiles, or logins

So when you restore from Carbonite:

• your documents will download

• but they’ll land inside whichever user account you’re logged into

• Windows will not magically rebuild the second user profile

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Do you need to factory-reset the new laptop?

❌ In most cases: No

A reset would just:

• put you back at square one

• force another transfer

• risk repeating the same mistake

There’s an easier, safer path.

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Best practical solution (recommended)

Step 1: Decide which account you want long-term

You have two sensible options:

Option A (simplest):

Keep the current account on the new laptop and make it your main one

This is what most people do.

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Step 2: Restore your files from Carbonite

• Log into Carbonite on the new laptop

• Restore:

  • Documents

  • Pictures

  • Desktop

  • Downloads

• They’ll restore into:

•  

  C:\Users\YourCurrentUsername\

That’s fine — Windows doesn’t care where the files came from.

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Step 3: (Optional but wise) Recreate folder structure

If you want things to look familiar:

• Create folders named like the old account

• Or just merge everything into Documents/Pictures etc.

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Step 4: Remove extra or unwanted accounts (later)

Once you’re confident everything is restored:

• Settings → Accounts → Other users

• Remove any account you don’t need

⚠️ Only do this after confirming all files are safely restored.

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When would a factory reset make sense?

Only if all three are true:

1. You want a perfectly clean start

2. You’re comfortable re-installing programs manually

3. You’re certain Carbonite has everything you need

Even then, it’s optional — not required.

 

Julsey, this is an AI response but seems to make sense. If you still aren't sure, wait for someone else to give a better response.

[jwhess]

There are times when you need to be the administrator to make things work.