Does GPO "Delete User Profiles Older Than X Days" Remove Local Administrator Profile?

Question

Does GPO "Delete User Profiles Older Than X Days" Remove Local Administrator Profile?

Anant Bera 271

Hello,

I am using the Group Policy setting "Automatically delete user profiles older than a specified number of days on system restart" to clean up old user profiles on our Windows systems.

I would like to confirm:

Does this policy delete the Local Administrator profile (C:\Users\Administrator) if it hasn’t been used within the specified days?
Are there any default exclusions for system profiles such as Default Profile or Public?
What are the possible impacts of enabling this policy?
- Does it affect service accounts running under a local user profile?
- Could it impact cached domain credentials for offline logins?
- Any profile that is being used as a service account will that we deleted?

Thanks in Advance

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Alexander Kruglov 0 Reputation points

2025-02-11T12:21:25.9833333+00:00
Hi!

Yes, there are eclusions to the profiles deleted using this GPO. These are:

Built in Administrator (C:\users\Administrator)

Default profile (C:\users\Default)

Local service and Network service profiles (C:\users\LocalService, C:\users\NetworkService)

All other accounts in use by the system (AKA services, workers etc)

Although if you run the task as a PowerShell script, no exclusions are going to be made, and it can break system if you do not know what you do!

Have a nice day :)
Anant Bera 271 Reputation points

2025-02-12T06:54:19.4833333+00:00

Hi Alexander

Thanks for the response, while testing the GPO in the test environment we found that the Built-in Administrator (C:\users\Administrator) is also being deleted once the GPO is applied. only the Default, active, public and connected profiles stays there

Is this Expected Behavior

Thanks
Doug Ellis 0 Reputation points

2025-03-06T16:19:08.2066667+00:00

Does this apply on creation date of profile or days of inactivity or modified date?
Craig Jones 1 Reputation point

2026-07-22T03:20:07.6733333+00:00

Hello,

Can you provide official Microsoft documentation stating these exclusions to this policy setting?

Thanks
JuliaMarvin 22,355 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator

2026-07-22T10:36:33.9066667+00:00

@Craig Jones
Please create your own thread/question.
This thread is old and will be locked now.

Alexander Kruglov 0 Reputation points

2025-02-11T12:21:25.9833333+00:00

Hi!

Yes, there are eclusions to the profiles deleted using this GPO. These are:

Built in Administrator (C:\users\Administrator)

Default profile (C:\users\Default)

Local service and Network service profiles (C:\users\LocalService, C:\users\NetworkService)

All other accounts in use by the system (AKA services, workers etc)

Although if you run the task as a PowerShell script, no exclusions are going to be made, and it can break system if you do not know what you do!

Have a nice day :)
Anant Bera 271 Reputation points

2025-02-12T06:54:19.4833333+00:00

Hi Alexander

Thanks for the response, while testing the GPO in the test environment we found that the Built-in Administrator (C:\users\Administrator) is also being deleted once the GPO is applied. only the Default, active, public and connected profiles stays there

Is this Expected Behavior

Thanks
Doug Ellis 0 Reputation points

2025-03-06T16:19:08.2066667+00:00

Does this apply on creation date of profile or days of inactivity or modified date?
Craig Jones 1 Reputation point

2026-07-22T03:20:07.6733333+00:00

Hello,

Can you provide official Microsoft documentation stating these exclusions to this policy setting?

Thanks
JuliaMarvin 22,355 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator

2026-07-22T10:36:33.9066667+00:00

@Craig Jones
Please create your own thread/question.
This thread is old and will be locked now.