Renaming a user's home folder

[Rich Pasco]

In Windows, it's easy to rename a user (change a user's user name)
at Control Panel / Users / Properties / General. However, this does
not rename their home folder (the subfolder of Documents and Settings).
Is there a way to do that, without breaking all the system references?

- Rich

 

[Ramesh, MS-MVP]

How to rename or move a User Profile folder?:
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/userpath.htm

--
Regards,

Ramesh Srinivasan, Microsoft MVP [Windows Shell/User]
The Winhelponline Blog: http://www.winhelponline.com/blog
Windows® Troubleshooting: http://www.winhelponline.com

 

[Rich Pasco]

How to rename or move a User Profile folder?:
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/userpath.htm

Perfect! Thanks!

- Rich

 

[Anteaus]

Quoting that page:

"...This is because of the reason that there may be some absolute path
references (to the old user profile folder) in the registry added by
third-party software. Therefore, there may be a loss of functionality in the
respective applications."

I wouldn't advise this. A lot of programs (Including some Microsoft ones!!)
make absolute references to profile contents. What then happens, if you
rename the profile folder, is that you end-up with 'crosslinked'
userprofiles, somewhat like crosslinked FAT clusters on a HD.

The results can range from your data appearing to be duplicated under other
useraccounts, to a major data loss from your profile when someone else's
account is deleted.

What is worse is that conventional backup procedures (which backup only your
own profile-folder's contents) may not give any protection against this.

 

[Bruce Chambers]

In Windows, it's easy to rename a user (change a user's user name)
at Control Panel / Users / Properties / General. However, this does
not rename their home folder (the subfolder of Documents and Settings).
Is there a way to do that, without breaking all the system references?

- Rich

The user profile folders (C:\Documents and Settings\Username)
_cannot_ be renamed, without unnecessarily risky registry editing, even
if the associated user account has been.

So, your best (and by far, the easiest) course of action would be to
log on using the built-in Administrator account, create a new user
account, with the username desired. Once you've logged in using this
new account (and transfered any data you need to preserve, you can then
delete the old user account(s).

HOW TO Create and Configure User Accounts in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;279783

How to Copy User Data to a New User Profile
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;811151


--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:


http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/555375

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