[sethwb]

There is a very strange user popping up in several User Rights Assignments in this computer's Local Security Settings. It's name is comprised of a long string of numbers, hyphens ( - ) and has a asterik ( * ) at the beginning. I'm trying to find out what it belongs to, but I can't seem to find a way to do this.

Would you please tell me how to find out what program or who this user belongs to?

As tempting as it is to simply remove every entry completely, I would like to eliminate the possibility of it being remnants from a virus/trojan that the antivirus scans removed recently.

OS: WinXP Pro

[lunarlander]

Did you delete a user recently? I don't remember the asterisk being there, but if you delete a user, then the Security tab will show his security ID instead.

[sethwb]

hmmm...yes I have deleted some users recently from the computer. More than one actually. Now that you mention it, I noticed that there is more than one of this type of user. The only difference being a single digit in the last sequence of numbers.

Not knowing what it was I did not feel safe posting it publicly, but I am hoping to find some information that will help me figure this out.

[sethwb]

It is an SID. I looked them up, here is an example of one:

S-1-5-21-7623811015-3361044348-030300820-1013

Do you know of a reference anywhere that I might be able to find out what it was for?

Before you answer that, please realize I have already looked on technet at the "Well known SIDs list," and determined that neither SID is in my ProfileList on the computer's registry.