How do I change user folder in C:\Users\<username> [Fall Creators Upd]

Kensta1092 · 07 Nov 2017

Hello!

Title says it all. I have a rather weird background and motivation as to why I want to do this: it's because I have been playing this visual novel called Doki Doki Literature Club!, and one of the characters breaks the 4th wall by calling out your name - Based on the name of the user folder, that is.

Mine happened to be "hp.pc", which made me cringe when I saw that name in the dialogue. Why? Because I'm on a laptop and this was the username ever since Windows 8.1.

So, my question stands as it is in the title. How do I change the name of my user folder in "C:\Users"? I'm asking this again because all posts I've read are for previous versions (Anniversary, mainly), and I doubt it's largely the same in Fall Creators Update.

I'm on Windows 10 Home x64 Fall Creators Update.

dalchina · 07 Nov 2017

Hi, it's often worth looking through the excellent and extensive Tutorial section Windows 10 Tutorial Index Tutorials (mostly by our hard working admin, Brink):

Change Name of User Profile Folder in Windows 10 User Accounts Tutorials

may help. Beware, technically a bit tricky.

Please take due precautions- we continually recommend people use disk imaging routinely to protect themselves against things going badly wrong. (System restore isn't 100% reliable).

Bree · 07 Nov 2017

It is not straight forward, and requires registry editing. The Fall Creators Update should work the same as all previous versions. Tutorial here....
Change Name of User Profile Folder in Windows 10

The easier (but not by much) way to get a new user folder name is to create a new local user account in a different name, make it an administrator, them migrate your documents and settings over to the new account.

If this name change is only needed for playing this visual novel, why not just create a second user account just to play it? That would be easier (and less risk or making a mistake) than either of the above options. That way you'd be able to keep the username you seem to be so fond of for all other purposes.

As you are running x64, you could sign in as your normal user, then use Fast User Switching when you want to play. When done, sign out of the 'play' account and you'll be able to go back to your normal account and carry on from where you left off as if nothing had happened.

Switch User in Windows 10

Kensta1092 · 08 Nov 2017

Thanks for the answers! I appreciate them!
@Bree While playing the visual novel is my only reason to change my user folder name, I honestly do have a bit of OCD and would also like to have it under my actual name....

Again, thank you very much, I'll mark as solved once I've done it and imported everything over...

TL;DR Thank you very, very much. I did the above tutorial and didn't run into issues. However, the visual novel didn't read off of the user folder, but directly my local account's username, so I changed it to something else and voila. Either way, I'm satisfied now that I see my name instead of "hp.pc"