Windows XP Profile Name change...

[Megadeth]

I took over payments on a dell laptop from a friend... The laptop is now under my name and ownershbip and I have all the software. The laptop has Windows XP Home and instead of formatting the machine (I didnt see any need there wasnt really anything on it anyways) I just removed a couple programs and deleted a couple documents, songs and pictures.

Anyway, I changed the profile name to my name but everytime I go to My Documents or something along those lines it's his profile name... Not a big deal but if it is easy to change without formatting and reinstalling then I would like to do that.... I might end up formatting and reinstalling windows anyways because there is something still installed that wont allow me to use the Windows startup screen.... Another thing thats not a big deal but if I keep running into small little things I might just Format and install to my liking.

 

[LiLithTecH]

Simply renaming the PROFILE does not work simply because
there are far to many Registry entries that need to be changed
also.

Best way would be to Create a NEW PROFILE and copy the files
and folders needed.

For more info, go here:
How to copy data from a corrupted user profile to a new profile

 

[imported_BikeDude]

Actually...

Most settings refer to %userprofile% versus a hardcoded path to same.

I've changed the directory name of a handful profiles, and so far the only app I've encountered that went nutty, was MS Outlook. The path to the outlook.pst file was hardcoded. No biggie.

Look under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\. If you only have a single user, there won't be too many SIDs there. The value to mess with is "ProfileImagePath".

I have Windows 2003 installed on two drives. One is 32-bit and the other the x64 version. My user has the same userprofile directory on both.