About a year ago, I went through the user profiles on our RDS server and deleted a whole bunch of user profiles from inactive accounts (users that no longer work here). Since then I have made it part of the routine when inactivating the user accounts of terminated employees to remove their profile on the RDS server to keep it cleaned up. Recently, I have been having problems doing that. When I go into the User Profiles under Advanced Systems Properties, the Delete option is almost always grayed out on these accounts. Until very recently, I could remove these profiles after a reboot of the server (which we do routinely once a week), but now that is not even working.
If I try to delete the folder under C:\Users, it always leaves behind the
ntuser.dat file and a handful of others. When I try to delete these files individually, I get the following error: "The action can't be completed because the file is open in System."
I don't understand why all of a sudden I am having this problem when as far as I know, nothing has changed on that server. Why would the system have these files open on an inactive user account? Is there anything I can do to force these files to be closed by the system so I can remove these profiles?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Alan Collins