Odd situation. Sometimes when I install Xp on a machine, after most of the setup there's a screen called "Who will use this computer?" where I have to type in names. Since the machines are mine I just want my default Administrator account (regardless of security issues and whatnot), but the setup "forces" me to type in a name for another admin account which I cannot remove later on. Other times, however, the setup skips this screen altogether "allowing" me to keep only one admin account.
Any idea why this happens and is there a way to make it do the latter?
A guess:
#1. Running setup after wiping the entire partition.
#2. Running setup using the Repair Windows option with previous user directori(es) intact.
That's the weird thing; I did two installs side by side on identical machines, both formating the disk with NTFS, yet I got the screen in one. Weird.
Thanks for your input though.
I erroneously said partition, but it is also possible that it (the disk) contain another Windows partition with XP user directories in it.
It happened to me every time I install new a Linux kernel and forgot to update GRUB to point to the correct partition. I have two Windows system, and at one time it strangely slow to start and did not retain any of my customizations because XP (apparently) read to the wrong partition just because I haven't set the active partition right. The one I put my user directories is hidden, while the XP kernel blindly loading any active partition, which is the wrong partition.
Because I don't know how you format the disk, I assume you might overlooked the possibility that you are formatting a partition, not an entire disk. The setup might detect the one(s) that you didn't touch (a false positive) setting it as active partition, and --even though you didn't use the "Repair Windows" option-- the setup did the right thing to create new directory with number appended to it (eg. it detected "Administrator" so it create "Administrator.001") to avoid the deleting the old account(s), copy some files, and boot.
Maybe this is why it didn't ask for new account. Just a wild guess though.