Please explain to me user account names and windows explorer confusion

KLC

Senior member
Jun 30, 2007
258
2
81
I've never paid much attention to user accounts, I had one admin account to serve them all but just before I upgraded my vista pc to win 7 I picked up some kind of nasty malware and now I'm committed to not using an admin account for general computing. But I'm confused about what I see in user accounts and what exists on my C drive and I'm hoping someone can explain it and answer a few questions.

When I first installed win 7 64 bit I entered the name "family" since it is a family computer. Then when I was connecting it to my WHS server I created a test account called "the Smiths" and later deleted it. When it was deleted I chose the option to erase the entire account and not save anything from it. Then when I decided I needed to get serious about user account control and not use an admin account for everything I changed my administrator account from "family" to "admin". I then created a new user account and called it "family".

But when I go to \users here is what I see:

1. My administrator account called "admin" is located at \users\family, the name of the original administrator account set up when I installed win 7.

2. My new user account "family" is located at \users\the Smiths, the name of the 2nd account I created and then supposedly deleted.

Why did Win 7 remember the name of the account I deleted? Why doesn't it change the directory to reflect the new names given to accounts? Can I change the directory to reflect the actual user names? I just want to eliminate any confusion that is created by directory names not matching user names. Thanks for any help.
 
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Charlie98

Diamond Member
Nov 6, 2011
6,292
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I'm going through the same thing you are... trying to get away from using the Admin account as the regular account (it's what I've always done in the past,) but I crashed and burned the first time I tried to do it, too. I'll be curious to see your replies...
 

KLC

Senior member
Jun 30, 2007
258
2
81
Charlie, I'm hoping someone will add some light to this. When I google user accounts they almost all talk about user account control, the ones that don't just talk about simple things like creating one or renaming one. One of the reasons I never bothered much with them is because they were so confusing.
 

Charlie98

Diamond Member
Nov 6, 2011
6,292
62
91
Charlie, I'm hoping someone will add some light to this. When I google user accounts they almost all talk about user account control, the ones that don't just talk about simple things like creating one or renaming one. One of the reasons I never bothered much with them is because they were so confusing.

And setting all the permissions and what not...
 

ViRGE

Elite Member, Moderator Emeritus
Oct 9, 1999
31,516
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Charlie, I'm hoping someone will add some light to this. When I google user accounts they almost all talk about user account control, the ones that don't just talk about simple things like creating one or renaming one. One of the reasons I never bothered much with them is because they were so confusing.
To be honest it's something best left alone. For various reasons Windows really, really hates it when you rename a user's directory. So while you can change the display name, internally it's still the old name to avoid breaking anything.

If you really want to go through with this, you're going to need to learn about User Profiles. The solution involves logging in as another admin, renaming the folder, and then modifying the registry. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2454362