Unable to remove Account Unknown, getting error "You can't remove Account Unknown because this object is inheriting permissions from its parent"

Found a solution to this problem.

Go to the parent folder of the folder that contains files with this issue of unknown account:
1. Right click on the PARENT folder and click on Properties.
2. On the Security Tab go to Advanced options (bottom of the windows)
3. On the new window click on Change Permissions button at the bottom.
4. Select the Users group (NOT THE AUTHENTICATED USERS, just Users)
5. Check the "Replace all child object permissions with inheritable permissions from this object"
6. Click on OK or Apply buttons and done, issue fixed.

Hope this helps someone else having this issue, to me it happened after reinstalling win 7 on the same machine and keeping my images on another partition so it was untouched by the new installation, so the old user account was still on the permissions of the files.

Hello SR2044NX,
Thank you for visiting Microsoft Answers forum.
Follow the instruction to delete the account

1. Log onto the computer using an account with administrator privileges.

2. Click the Start Button.

3. Click the picture associated with your account at the top of the menu.

4. Select Manage another account.

5. When the UAC box pops up, click Continue.

6. Select the user account that is to be deleted.

7. Click Delete the Account.

8. You will be asked if you wish to keep the files from the deleted account. To save the account’s desktop and personal files to your desktop, click Keep Files. This will place the files into a directory with the account’s name onto your desktop. Otherwise click the Delete Files button.

9. Click Delete Account

Let us know how it goes.
Thanks,

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Martin
Microsoft Answers Support Engineer
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