ASP.NET Machine Account – OK to Delete?

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On my Win 10 Home system, there is a user account named “ASP.NET Machine Account”.  It is a local, standard (not Administrator) account, and it is password protected (but I have no idea what the password is).  I did not create this account, nor do I ever login or use it — at least not that I’m aware of.

My main question is this: Is it safe to delete this ASP.NET Machine Account?

One additional question though:  If I find that deleting the account causes some problems, how would I go about re-creating the account to fix any such issues?

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[PKCano]

This may answer your question.

If you Google “Windows ASP.NET account” there is other information.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 9 months ago by PKCano.

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Tom-R

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PK, I checked the link you provided, and it basically says this:

Its normally a system service account used with Microsoft’s Internet Information Service web server software for developing and publishing web pages.  Also, it is sometimes related to the .NET framework.  If you work with asp.net development work then keep that account. Otherwise, you may delete/remove this account.

Well I know I’m not doing any ASP.NET development work, and I’m not developing or publishing web pages.  And I don’t have MS Internet Information Services enabled on this system.  So based on that I would probably assume it’s OK to delete the account.

However, this system does have Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 installed.  And it also has a couple .NET Framework 4.7 Advanced Services enabled (i.e., ASP.NET 4.7 and TCP Port Sharing under WCF Services).

So what I’m concerned about is this: Will deleting the ASP.NET Machine Account cause problems for .NET Framework 1.1 or the .NET Framework 4.7 Advanced Services?  Just doing a Google search on “Windows ASP.NET account” doesn’t provide much insight into whether or not that account is needed or used by those .NET Framework services.  Is there any link with more specific info on what that account is actually used for?

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Personally, I would leave it alone. I’ve never seen any negative affect from it being there. It’s on all computers by default.

But you can Google the services and see what they do. That would be my approach to be able to answer you question.

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Tom-R

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What PK suggested will do the trick.

For a less than clinical explanation have a look-see  here.

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Tom-R

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