"Wrong Name" said in
I just purchased a like-new laptop but someone else had registered it
in their name. I went into the registry
(HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\WINDOWS NT\CURRENT VERSION)
and changed the name of the owner to my name. In control panel,
system, general, the new name is shown. But when looking at Windows
Exployer / documents & settings, the old name persists and refused to
allow any renaming. How do I get rid of the old name entirely and
replace it with my name. The old name is "ljqassrhjgf" which you may
guess is hard to memorize.
Please help me!
Wrong Name
- Log on under the Administrator account (or whatever it may have been
renamed). That way you are using the C:\D & S\Administrator profile
directory.
- Rename the C:\D & S\ljqassrhjgf directory to C:\D & S\yourname.
- Start -> Programs -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management.
Navigate to the Computer Management -> System Tools -> Local Users and
Groups -> Users node in the tree. Right-click on the "ljqassrhjgf" username
and rename it to "yourname". Right-click again on that account (now called
"yourname"), select Properties, and under the Profile tab enter the new path
to that user's profile directory (C:\D & S\yourname). I haven't tried this
technique. Instead, I've edited the profile path in the registry (but then
I didn't need to also change the username on the account).
The above is just a guess. Alternatively, copy the profile for one account
atop the profile for another [new] account:
- Log on as Administrator.
- Create a new account called "yourname". That just creates the account but
does not actually create the profile directory.
- Logoff Administrator and logon as "yourname" to now create the profile
directory.
- Logoff "yourname" and logon as Administrator.
- Right-click My Computer, select Properties, open Advanced tab, click the
Settings button in for User Profiles.
- Highlight the "ljqassrhjgf" account. Click the Copy To button. Browse to
the profile directory for "yourname". You are copying ljqassrhjgf's profile
atop yours so you have all the same settings for the desktop, start menu,
etc. Be sure permissions are selected so "yourname" can access the
"yourname" profile over which is getting copied (i.e., you are changing
permissions from "ljqassrhjgf" to "yourname" for that profile path). There
is another option there but I forget (and don't have multiple accounts to
check right now, and I still need to configure XP so it behaves like Win2000
in showing all accounts).
- The "ljqassrhjgf" profile directory gets copied over the "yourname"
profile directory and "yourname" account is given permissions to that copied
profile.
I've done the above many times under Windows 2000. Basically I want to
always logon under my own username (which is in the Administrators group)
but have the Administrator account use the same desktop, Start menu, and
other settings as my account. However, before you do this, you might want
to consider that everything under My Documents in the profile path will also
get copied. In my case, I don't want all "myname" docs copied under the
Administrator account (so I use TweakUI to change the path to My Documents
to another path outside of the profile directory). In your case, you
probably do.
Then logon under "yourname" to make sure it logs on okay and that it looks
like when you logged on under "ljqassrhjgf". Then you can delete the
"ljqassrhjgf" account followed by deleting the now redundant and defunct
C:\D & S\ljqassrhjgf profile directory. In short, create a new account,
then copy the profile from an old account over the profile for the new
account (and make sure permissions are for the new account on the copied
profile), and delete the old account and old profile if not needed anymore.
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