Administrators is the minimum group membership required to complete this procedure. Review the details in "Additional considerations" in this topic.

Deleting a local group

To delete a local group using the Windows interface

  1. Open Computer Management.

  2. In the console tree, click Groups.

    Where?

    • Computer Management\System Tools\Local Users and Groups\Groups

  3. Right-click the group that you want to delete, and then click Delete.

Additional considerations

  • To perform this procedure, you must provide credentials for the Administrator account on the local computer (if you are prompted), or you must be a member of the Administrators group on the local computer.

  • The following default groups cannot be deleted:

    • Administrators

    • Backup Operators

    • Cryptographic Operators

    • Distributed COM Users

    • Guests

    • IIS_IUSRS

    • Network Configuration Operators

    • Performance Log Users

    • Performance Monitor Users

    • Power Users

    • Remote Desktop Users

    • Replicator

    • Users

  • A deleted group cannot be recovered.

  • Deleting a local group removes only the group. It does not delete the user accounts, computer accounts, or group accounts that were members of that group.

  • If you delete a group and then create another group with the same group name, you must set new permissions for the new group. The new group will not inherit the permissions that were assigned to the old group.

To delete a local group using a command line

  1. Open Command Prompt.

  2. To delete a group, type:

    net localgroup <GroupName> /delete

Additional considerations

  • To perform this procedure, you must provide credentials for the Administrator account on the local computer (if you are prompted), or you must be a member of the Administrators group on the local computer.

  • The following default groups cannot be deleted:

    • Administrators

    • Backup Operators

    • Cryptographic Operators

    • Distributed COM Users

    • Guests

    • IIS_IUSRS

    • Network Configuration Operators

    • Performance Log Users

    • Performance Monitor Users

    • Power Users

    • Remote Desktop Users

    • Replicator

    • Users

  • A deleted group cannot be recovered.

  • Deleting a local group removes only the group. It does not delete the user accounts, computer accounts, or group accounts that were members of that group.

  • If you delete a group and then create another group with the same group name, you must set new permissions for the new group. The new group will not inherit the permissions that were granted to the old group.

  • For more information about the net localgroup command, see Managing local groups from the command line.

Additional references

Default local groups

Delete a local user account

Command-line syntax notation

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