During the Windows installation process, many users do not think about how important it is to choose the right username. It is the name you will see when you log in to the operating system and one of the root words on the way to any installed program. The name of the user’s folder depends on the name of the account. In this article, we will look into how you can rename a user folder in Windows 10.
Contents
- Method 1: Creating a new account with the required name and changing its type
- Method 2: Renaming the user data folder in Windows 10 Home Edition
- Method 3: Renaming the user data folder in Windows 10 Pro and Enterprise
- What to do if, during the data folder renaming, or moving your information into new user data folder important data was lost?
Often, when installing Windows, the user is assigned a common name – like “User” or any other. After all, the system may not have been installed by you. But in the process of use, a standard or any different username may annoy or dislike the user. Simple renaming a user folder on C:\Users will not lead to anything. It doesn’t work like that. However, there are also no functions in the system to change the name of the user folder. So what to do in this situation?
Method 1: Creating a new account with the required name and changing its type
When using an utterly new account, the deleting of which will not entail any negative consequences, one of the options for solving the task will be to create a new user profile with the necessary name and access level. After logging into a new account, you can get rid of the old one by merely deleting it.
Important: After performing this operation, all content in the user’s folder will be deleted.
To start with, you need to create a new account with the desired username. To do this, you should:
Step 1: Right-click on “Start” button and select “Control Panel”
Step 2: While in the Control Panel, choose the “Large Icons” display mode and select “User Accounts”
Step 3: In the window that appears, click on “Manage another account”
Step 4: To add a new user click on the link “Add a new user in PC settings”
Step 5: The system will move us to the “Family & other users” tab in the settings. Click on the button “Add someone else to tis PC”
Step 6: In the window that appears, click on “I don’t have this person’s sign-in information”
Step 7: Then click on “Add a user without a Microsoft account”
Step 8: Fill in all the necessary fields, and then confirm the action by clicking “Next”
Step 9: After a new account is created, select a new profile and click on “Change account type”
Step 10: Choose “Administrator” from the suggested types and confirm the action by clicking “OK”
After completing the steps above, you must login to the new profile. To get rid of an already unneeded account, go to the accounts in settings and delete it
Note: This method is the simplest one, but as a rule, it is used very rarely.
Method 2: Renaming the user data folder in Windows 10 Home Edition
This method is suitable only for Windows 10 Home users. Also, after the procedure, some programs will need to be re-configured because they will not be able to find some configuration files due to changes in the file structure.
To start with, we need to activate the Administrator account. To do this, we need to:
Step 1: Right-click on the «Start» button and select «Windows PowerShell (Admin)»
tep 2: Type the «net user Adminisrtator /active:yes» command and press «Enter»
Now, you need to sign out of the current account and sign in to the account we just activated. To do this, press “Start”, then select “Power” and click “Sign Out”
After you sign out, select the administrator account that we activated earlier. If, for some reason, this account is not present on the screen, you need to restart your computer.
Now, go to the system directory with all user folders at C:\Users. Rename the user folder via the context menu or by pressing the F2 key.
After that, you need to make changes to the Windows Registry. To do this:
Step 1: Press the “Win+R” key combination, and in the window that appears, enter the system command “regedit” to start the registry editor.
Step 2: Go to HKEY_LOCALMACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList and double left-click on “ProfileList” folder. The contents of this folder should open up before us.
Step 3: Now, you need to find precisely the folder that links to our account. It will not be so easy to do because the folder names contain dashes and numbers. You should open each of them, paying attention inside to the value of the string “ProfileImagePath”, which indicates to which profile the folder links. To see the value of the string, you need to click on it twice.
Having found the necessary folder, enter the updated path to the user directory. Confirm the action by clicking “OK”.
Now you can close the registry editor. The only thing left is to disable the Administrator profile. To do this, launch the command prompt as Administrator and type the command “net user Administrator /active:no” Press “Enter” to confirm it.
Now it remains to restart the system and sign in to the account for which the changes were made.
Method 3: Renaming the user data folder in Windows 10 Pro and Enterprise
If you are using Windows 10 Pro or Windows 10 Enterprise, you should rename the user data folder:
Step 1: Log in to your profile with administrator rights, or activate your Administrator profile following the instructions described above.
Step 2: Open the Start context menu by pressing “Win+X” and clicking on “Computer Management”.
Step 3: Open “Local Users”, then open “Users” and select the field with the user name to be renamed, right-click on it and select “Rename”.
Step 4: Enter a new name, then click on any free space in the open window to save changes.
Step 5: Open the Explorer in any convenient way (for example, by pressing the Win+E keys) and change the user directory name, located at C:\Users
Step 6: Open the registry editor as described above and go to the list of profiles on the way: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList. Find a folder with the required account, as described above.
Step 7: Double-click on the “ProfileImagePath” string and set a new custom directory path. Confirm the action by clicking “OK”, and close all windows.
Step 8: Open “Windows PowerShell (Admin)” and deactivate the administrator profile by typing “net user administrator /active:no”
After that, the procedure to change the name of the user directory can be considered fully completed. Now it is enough to sign out of the Administrator account, and go to the one for which all the actions were performed. If everything has been done correctly, there will be no system errors once the account is started.
What to do if, during the data folder renaming, or moving your information into new user data folder important data was lost?
Often, there are situations when the user can do something not according to instructions, or during the renaming of the data folder may occur system errors. Unfortunately, sometimes this can lead to the loss of important data that may have been stored on the desktop or elsewhere on disk C. Besides, there are often situations when due to the manipulations of inexperienced users, Windows stops working, and you have to reinstall the system, which almost always leads to formatting of disk C. What to do if important information was lost?
We strongly recommend you not to make hasty decisions and use a professional solution for data recovery RS Partition Recovery.
The program is easy to use and, therefore, suitable even for inexperienced users.
Besides, RS Partition Recovery successfully recovers lost data in 99% of cases. RS Partition recovery supports ALL modern file systems and data recovery from RAID arrays, which significantly emphasizes it among other programs for data recovery.
To recover a lost file you should:
Step 1. Install and launch the RS Partition Recovery.
All-in-one data recovery software
Step 2. Select the drive or partition from which you want to recover data.
Step 3. Choose the type of analysis.
Fast scan you should use in case the file was lost recently. The program will scan the drive quickly and show the files available for recovery.
The Full analysis function allows you to find lost data, after formatting, disc resizing, or file structure corruption (RAW).
Step 4. Preview and select the files to recover it.
Step 5. Add the files you want to save to the "Restore list" or select the entire partition and click Recovery.
It should be noted that it is best to save the recovered file to an external hard drive or USB flash drive.
The process of recovering the lost file will start, and once it is finished, the file will be available for use again.
