What causes user names to get swapped to the "System Account" user name? I had put a comments textbox on a custom list with Append Only turned on. Somehow the commentor's names got changed to "System Account so we can't determine who made those comments. Something happening on the server side where that metadata is being lost?

Normally, accounts are displayed as "System Account" when they are either the account used by the application pool of the web application, or specified on the "Policy for Web Application" page in the Central Administration (to solve, clear the Account operates as System checkbox for the specific account).

Zoomers, I am just a site collection admin. We didn't made any chagnes to our servers from last one month. I don't have access to any of our servers. Howcome this change was occured? The same web application is used by several site collections. I can see the system account user only in some list items in specific list (Discussion Board). If it is an issue with the server, it should reflect in all site collections. Could you please explain this in a power user perspective? This may be a general answer to the question. But your answer didn't resolve my issue. Any other ideas would be appreciated. Thanks, Anu.

Hello Anuradha, When we add any user to the web application policy (Central Admin -> Application management-> policy for web application), there is an option (check box) while adding a new account as to whether the account acts as a system account. If so, the account will be displayed as a system account within that web app. So you can check which all accounts have been added to that web app, in which you found that the changes were made by system account and can work accordingly. Hope this helps, Regards, Rohan