Change Name of User Profile Folder in Windows 10  

Brink said:

Hello Maui, :

I'm afraid at this point after making those manual changes in the registry, it may be best to create and use a new account instead.
1) Create a new local account with the name you want that will also be used for the profile folder.
2) Make the new local account an administrator.
3) Sign out of this account, and sign in to the new local account.
4) Copy over any files you want from the old account to this new local account.
5) Delete the old account.
6) If wanted, you can switch this new local account to be a Microsoft account without changing the profile folder name you wanted.

Thanks for your reply Brink. I have used your option 1 to create a new local account. At this point can I simply copy over everything from my old user account folder to the new user account folder to have the correct access to all of my previously installed software?

EDIT: I just realized that instead of creating the User folder "Myname", Windows, in it's infinite wisdom created it as "Myname.ThinkPad-X1-E". Here we go again. How do I proceed?

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Maui Dude said:

Thanks for your reply Brink. I have used your option 1 to create a new local account. At this point can I simply copy over everything from my old user account folder to the new user account folder to have the correct access to all of my previously installed software?

EDIT: I just realized that instead of creating the User folder "Myname", Windows, in it's infinite wisdom created it as "Myname.ThinkPad-X1-E".

Here's a follow-up to my previous post regarding the account manager having appended my PC's name to my new local account name on the associated User folder. I deleted the account, realizing that with an already existing User folder named "Myname" (from the original failed attempt), creating a local account named "Myname" would not be able to duplicate the same named folder, and so the account manager appends the computers name to differentiate it. So, the solution required creating an interim sacraficial account, transfering files, and then deleting the original "Myname" account, creating the final Myname account, and transfering files to their new home, and then deleting the sacraficial account.

I'm happy to hear you got it sorted out @Maui Dude.

jtmochel said:

Brink,

Apart from initially not running in an admin context and the change not being effective. Even as an admin when I went for the name change on the User profile it said that I could not because the user profile was in use. When I checked again in the user section I saw the profile name change that I made as a separate but unused profile.

After a couple hours I've left things alone. Not wanting to break the PC for a minor aesthetic change.

Surprised I couldn't get it to work.

Jonathan

Hello Jonathan, and welcome to Ten Forums.

Usually, an "in use" message indicates the account you want to change its profile folder name is still signed in.

Did you sign out of that account, and sign in to another administrator account to make the changes?

jtmochel said:

Initially it was signed in. However, after I signed it out I get the same error. Yes I signed out and used the elevated admin account to try and make the change. Again, the weird part was that it must made a separate account with the change and the original was there and unaffected.

Coincidentally, I feel like my Microsoft exchange account got messed up and I lost my organizational activation for office apps... probably a separate issue though.

Thanks,

Jonathan

While signed into a different administrator account, make sure the ProfileImagePath string value has the correct path of the profile folder of the affected account.

jtmochel said:

It did, I only have two user accounts so it is not difficult to keep them straight.

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Do you think attempting this fix would be enough to disrupt an office 365 connection because I've lost authentication of those apps I had been using from my employer. Getting the error message that my organization has deleted my computer. Any advice regarding:

Something went wrong
Your organization has deleted this device. To fix this, contact your system administrator and provide the error code 700003′

Would be appreciated.

As a test, go through the steps to rename the profile folder back to the original name before you had this issue to see if it will sort it.