Renaming user not reflected in Windows Explorer

[BudV]

Vista Home Premium SP1.

I don't know if this occurred in XP or not.

I have renamed a user, but when I use Windows Explorer, the old user name
shows up instead of the new one, even after a restart. What can I do to get
consistency?

 

[Jon Wallace]

Hi,

When you rename a user (i'm assuming you did this in control panel -> users)
you are just modifying the user account, not the actual files and folders
associated with the user.

Let's say you have USERA. USERA also has a folder C:\USERS\USERA which is
associated with the user account. When you rename the user account to
USERB, USERB has a folder C:\USERS\USERA which is associated with USERB.

Why do you want to rename the account, how much data is stored for the
account and is just creating a new one with a different name and removing
the old one an option?

Cheers,
Jon

www.insidetheregistry.com

 

[BudV]

Thanks for the response.

Before I answer your questions, I want to make sure that we're on the same
wavelength here. In your example, the actual folder name hasn't changed
(which is what I was complaining about originally). CO:USERS\USER was first
associated with USERA, and after my change, the *same* folder is now
associated with USERB. So everything is still kosher, but it's going to
cause some confusion for another person looking at it. I could find out for
myself, but as long as you're handy: can I rename the folder to
C:\USERS\USERB to regain consistency?

Why do I want to rename the account? It's kind of stupid, but whatever...

I had backed up all my stuff from one account to an offline backup system.
My PC got sick (I'll skip the details), so I erased the hard drive and
reinstalled from scratch. I decided to be smarter about the user names I
assigned, but I was concerned about restoring from the backup system to a
user name that it didn't know about, so I used an old name just for
restoring, and intended to rename it later. Of course, I found out later
that it wasn't necessary to do that, because the backup system has a
"Restore to ..." option. (!)

How much data? 32GB of photos.

If I can't rename the folder, I will probably create a new account, move the
data, and remove the old account as you suggested.

 

[Jon Wallace]

Hi,

You could rename the folder, you would have to do it from another account
because if you are logged in as the user who owns the folder things will be
locked preventing it.

Now the problem is that just renaming the folder doesn't fix the
association. The folder is still associated with the user account in the
registry so you would have to change the relevent locations in the registry
too. If you have renamed the account, the SID (Security Identifier) will be
the same so permissions won't be an issue, just the association.

Honestly, IMHO the quickest thing for you to do is to create a new account
instead of renaming the old one, log in and get a new folder and the move
all of the stuff from the old one into the new one (documents, pictures
etc...)

I hope this helps,
Jon

www.insidetheregistry.com

 

[Patrick Keenan]

Thanks for the response.

Before I answer your questions, I want to make sure that we're on the same
wavelength here. In your example, the actual folder name hasn't changed
(which is what I was complaining about originally). CO:USERS\USER was
first associated with USERA, and after my change, the *same* folder is now
associated with USERB. So everything is still kosher, but it's going to
cause some confusion for another person looking at it. I could find out
for myself, but as long as you're handy: can I rename the folder to
C:\USERS\USERB to regain consistency?

No. This is the way this works, and it's always worked this way.

Windows 2000 and XP behave exactly the same way.

Why do I want to rename the account? It's kind of stupid, but whatever...

I had backed up all my stuff from one account to an offline backup system.
My PC got sick (I'll skip the details), so I erased the hard drive and
reinstalled from scratch. I decided to be smarter about the user names I
assigned, but I was concerned about restoring from the backup system to a
user name that it didn't know about, so I used an old name just for
restoring, and intended to rename it later. Of course, I found out later
that it wasn't necessary to do that, because the backup system has a
"Restore to ..." option. (!)

How much data? 32GB of photos.

If I can't rename the folder, I will probably create a new account, move
the data, and remove the old account as you suggested.

That's what you have to do to achieve the result you want.

HTH
-pk

<snippage>