I recently deleted an account on my PC (XP SP3)
The delete user (including delete files) function just sat there forever,
and eventually (an hour later) I gave up and shut the PC down!

Now the "User Accounts" part of control panel no longer shows the old account.
So it is gone.
However I can still see the directory tree for the user, and interestingly
(!?) if I try to create a new account with the same name as the old account
is refuses, saying the account already exists. So it is also still there!

If I try to delete the accounts directory trees (from a different "admin"
account, from explorer, it will delete most of them, but the "username"
directory, under c:\documents and settings certain files (NTUSER.DAT and
application data folder for example) don't delete.

so, two questions....
1: I'm assuming there is no "risk" in this account being left in a wierd
state, I can't see there would be but what do I know?
2: I'd like to understand why, and how to fix it, just because learning is
good.

I'm assuming that the delete acccount thing got stuck, and there are bits
left maybe in the registry, but I was hoping someone could help me understand.

I can supply registry dumps etc if it helps,

Thanks in advance