I had never created user names in Windows XP Professional before (just
logging in as the default--administrator), and was convinced to create
user names. Now the old administrator files seem to have disappeared.
I cannot find them anywhere on the hard drive. I have tried looking
through all the folders and searching the hard drive, with no luck.
Looking for a solution that will recover/find the old files.

Hello dear kingdave,
you have 2 solutions, first  go to this 

address: "your windows 

drive:\Documents and Settings\ " so you 

see all of users documents, go to all user 

foldor.
if you still problem so test another way,  

please restart  your windows, when you 

see the welcome screen, hold "Alt+Ctrl" 

and press "Delete" key for two times, now 

you see a new windows, in username field 

type " administrator " and if you choosed 

any password for administrator account 

type it, now press " enter" now you are 

loged in as administor.

if you have any problem, only tell me, 

Iraniananswer.

I'm not sure which service pack or critical update did it, but in XP
pro (and i think home) if you create a user account as an
administrator, the Administrator account becomes locked for normal
use. It will not show up under the Users manager in control panels
anymore and it will also not show up on your Welcome screen. If you
try to login with a text login in normal mode it will tell you
Administrator account is unavailable or locked or something. You
should still be able to see its folder under Documents and Settings
but because of XP security i doubt you can access that folder. The
only way to log into the account now is by rebooting into safemode.
Once you get to the user selection screen (if you have it setup to
load the Welcome screen first) press CTRL ALT DEL twice and it will
pull up a text login screen. Try Administrator and then the password
you were using and you should be able to log into it. This may seem
anoying but trust me its worth it. You honestly don't want to be using
the ONLY administrator user account in windows because windows is
known for screwing up user accounts and if you don't have a backup
account (like the now-invisible Administrator account) you'd never be
able to get back into the system (of course theres millions of Linux
boot disks that have XP password cracks that could save you). Anyway
to sum up:

XP locks the Administrator account and makes it accessable ONLY in
safemode. I do not know of a way to make it work in normal mode other
than creating another account, deleting the Administrator account and
recreating it yourself (if windows created it, its gonna lock it).

Good luck,
Charlie