Is there an easy way to rename a profile then transfer data to new profile with original name?

[Nate Goulet]

I have a computer on a network that has a glitch printing when using a
specific Windows profile. I believe it was caused by a Windows
security update, and Microsoft could not help considering it's an old
version of Word that is not printing correctly. We have many reasons
for not upgrading to a newer Office.

If I create a new profile, the glitch goes away. I've seen this
problem on two computers, and both of them are important machines with
lots of programs and data installed.

Considering the glitch will be resolved when creating a new profile, I
was wondering if there is an easy way to retain the original username
with all of the networking settings in place?

I'd rather not have to pop in a new hard drive and transfer reinstall
all of the programs and transfer all the data as I had to do on the
other machine, and i'm likely to see this glitch on more computers in
the future.

Thanks for any help.

 

[John Wunderlich]

(e-mail address removed) (Nate Goulet) wrote in

I have a computer on a network that has a glitch printing when
using a specific Windows profile. I believe it was caused by a
Windows security update, and Microsoft could not help considering
it's an old version of Word that is not printing correctly. We
have many reasons for not upgrading to a newer Office.

If I create a new profile, the glitch goes away. I've seen this
problem on two computers, and both of them are important machines
with lots of programs and data installed.

Considering the glitch will be resolved when creating a new
profile, I was wondering if there is an easy way to retain the
original username with all of the networking settings in place?

I'd rather not have to pop in a new hard drive and transfer
reinstall all of the programs and transfer all the data as I had
to do on the other machine, and i'm likely to see this glitch on
more computers in the future.

Thanks for any help.

The problem probably originates from a corrupted user registry hive.

Your best bet is to create another user (eg "Fred") and move the user
data to the Fred profile using the steps in the article:

"How to copy data from a corrupted user profile to a new profile in
Windows XP"
<http://support.microsoft.com/kb/811151>

When done, delete the original profile then re-create another one with
the same name. Use the above procedure to copy the data from Fred back
to the newly created profile with the same name as the original.

You shouldn't have to reinstall programs as that is not usually a user-
profile affected area. Most network settings are also global. Some
user-specific network settings may be stored in the user registry and
will be lost in the process.

If you have a System Restore Point from before this was a problem,
simply restoring from the restore point may solve the problem.

HTH,
John