randraka

Telephone support was able to resolve this for me, though it took most of the day. Basically, they needed to boot the computer up in safe mode and log on as an administrator. As I recall, that took some doing. When he finally was able to get in, it turned out all the accounts except the phantom account were marked as disabled. Putting those back to enabled fixed the problem. I did not make notes of all the steps they took, but there was a lot of effort trying to get into safe mode and getting administrator privilege. Your mileage may vary.

I have already tried all the tips in Katarina's instructions. I still have the problem of a computer that only shows the phantom account and does not allow access to the regular accounts or their folders. I cannot re-install windows from the phantom account. This is making the machine useless. How do I recover from this? Is there someone there I can talk to directly so that we can resolve this? Thanks

I have signed into my eset account from another computer, set it to missing and back several times over several days, but it still remains locked so that the only account available to log into is the phantom account. I have tried with the affected device turned off as well as with it turned on and connected to the internet. No results either way. The link you provided in your reply above indicates the computer will reboot. It does not.

I am having the same issue with a Lenovo notebook. Son signed on via anti-theft account, I got the alert, marked it as not missing. Now the notebook opens up with the log-on to the phantom account, no other options available, the other accounts do not show up at all. I can't install any programs on it for him, and I get flooded with suspicious activity emails because he can only use the phantom account now. Brand new computer with apparently no way to revert it back to not missing status. Help, the computer is pretty much useless as-is.

I am having the same issue. My son's computer was logged onto via the phantom account and he "left it at school" so I marked it as missing. Next day he got it back, but even though I marked it as recovered it automatically logs onto the phantom account when powered up without offering any other account choices, and while in the phantom account, it appears to be the only account on the computer. How do I get back into the other accounts? I tried reverting to missing and then back to recovered several times, with his computer connected via different wifi hotspots to no avail. This is a brand new computer just given to him last week, and it is locked so that I can't install anything on it, and he can't get to his work he stored on it. All it can do now is browse the internet, and it appears I can't even restore it to the factory original configuration because it is locked out. How do I fix this?