Change Name of User Profile Folder in Windows 10

Josey Wales · 17 Jul 2017

Brink said:

Hey Josey, :)

Correct. As Denis posted above, this tutorial will only change the name of the account's user profile folder, and not the account's user name.

If you wanted to change the account's user name, you could use the tutorial below instead.

Change User Name of Account in Windows 10 Windows 10 User Accounts Tutorials

Thanks Brink and Try3

Brink · 17 Jul 2017

John W · 26 Jul 2017

UhOh,

After successfully changing the user folder name and the account users name (to the same "new" Id) I searched the registry for the "old" user's folder ID. There was A LOT of references to the old folder. After a while I found some programs inop due to being associated with the "old" user folder ID.

Think I'll just do a clean install of windows.

The reason I wanted to change the user folder ID is because on installation WIN 10 asked something like "What would you like to name this computer?", Unfortunately I took it literally and named the computer which turned out to be the user folder ID name.

Brink · 26 Jul 2017

Hello John, :)

If you wanted to change the name of the computer instead, you could use an option in the tutorial below.

Change Computer Name in Windows 10 Windows 10 General Tips Tutorials

John W · 26 Jul 2017

I had already done that, it's easy and Microsoft even provides an easy way to change the name of the computer, they also provide an easy way to change the user name - but unfortunately there is no easy or otherwise way of changing the user's folder name (which also shows up in security IDs).

Have someone give it a try in Windows 10, but on a windows installation they wouldn't mind redoing with a clean install.

Try3 · 27 Jul 2017

John,

"unfortunately there is no easy or otherwise way of changing the user's folder name" - but there is. The procedure in this tutorial does precisely that.

What programs have you found to be inop afterwards? What symptoms did their inop-ness generate?

I have used this procedure and it gave me no problems.

Why did you suddenly throw in a reference to Windows 10? This is TenForums. Everything here is focussed on Windows 10.

Denis

John W · 27 Jul 2017

Hi Denis,

Glad to hear you didn't mess up your Win 10 installation.

My old Users\<name>\ was "Mercury", I changed it to "JMW".
I searched the registry for "Mercury"

There were:
323 instances of "C:/Users/Mercury/..." in the current User hive
32 in the classes root hive
& 49 in the local machine hive

I think I may have attached a .txt file listing all the above.

Mercury reg entries.txt

Incidentally I still have a C:/Users/Mercury/...

A couple of programs I had to reinstall were Roboform and HD Tune.

I haven't bothered with any others as I'll be doing a fresh install later.

The reason I mentioned Win 10 in the tenforum is because Brink has an also excellent sevenforum.
I didn't know there was two completely separate teams working them.

Most of the registry entries are for onedrive, edge, the microsoft store, and a bunch of other indecipherable references.

Regards,

John

dcv · 16 Aug 2017

A followup question to John W's post: I started to follow the procedure (which is very nicely laid out btw) but stopped precisely because of the same issue, i.e. the existing folder ID is found in hundreds of keys and paths throughout my registry. I don't think it's surprising that some programs will have a problem with that post-change. Which brings me to the question:

wouldn't a solution be to simply search/replace the old folder ID with the new *throughout* the registry? It seems to me that this would take care of any issues but wanted to check if anyone has tried it.

John W said:

UhOh,

After successfully changing the user folder name and the account users name (to the same "new" Id) I searched the registry for the "old" user's folder ID. There was A LOT of references to the old folder. After a while I found some programs inop due to being associated with the "old" user folder ID.

Think I'll just do a clean install of windows.

The reason I wanted to change the user folder ID is because on installation WIN 10 asked something like "What would you like to name this computer?", Unfortunately I took it literally and named the computer which turned out to be the user folder ID name.

Brink · 16 Aug 2017

Hello dcv, and welcome to Ten Forums. :)

Usually, you will only need to change the folder name and folder path for the ProfileImagePath value as in the tutorial since this is what everything references. There may be a few rare exceptions for old programs that do not fully support Windows 10 though.

John W · 16 Aug 2017

Most of my left over references in the registry were "Most of the registry entries are for onedrive, edge, the microsoft store, and a bunch of other indecipherable references.".

However I think I had gone through procedures to remove onedrive and a number of other customizations to Win 10 prior to changing the user folder name. Which may have something to do with my result.

I would recommend making a good, reliable system image of your C: drive and a system restore of the C: drive before following the file name change process and of course back up the registry key that is changed.

Change Name of User Profile Folder in Windows 10

What's in a name?