username

[teacup]

I have re installed windows xp (sp2) and changed the username in the user accounts from "owner" to my own name. This appears at the top of the start menu and also in the my documents folder, but looking in the documents and settings folder the "owner" name is still there. I would have thought that changing the username would also be reflected in the documents and settings folder but it doesn't seem to be so..any idea why or can it be changed?

[Nick Peers]

That's by design - changing the underlying username would cause problems elsewhere, with underlying references and so on. What you could do is create a new user profile with the name you want, then clone the old profile to the new one.

I did a six-step walkthrough on this for issue 194 of PC Answers:

1. Boot into Safe mode
Restart your PC and tap [F8] so the boot menu appears. Select Safe mode and press [Enter] twice. Log on as the master Administrator account, clicking Yes when prompted.

2. Create new user account
If you haven’t already done so, click Start > Control Panel > User Accounts. Create a new user account with computer administrator privileges – this will be your new account.

3. Activate new account
Click Start > Log Off > Log Off. Log on to the user account you created in step two, then immediately click Start > Log Off > Log Off and return to the administrator account.

4. Display user profiles
Click Start, right-click My Computer and select Properties. Switch to the Advanced tab and click Settings under User Profiles to display the screen shown above.

5. Copy profile
Select your existing user profile and click Copy To. Click Browse to locate and select your new user profile folder under C:\Documents and Settings. Click OK twice.

6. Review warning and continue
Read the warning and click Yes. Your old user profile’s settings and files will be copied to your new profile. Once complete, reboot into normal mode and log on as your new profile.

Once you've verified this has worked, you can then delete your old user profile, including all the settings and files. But don't do so until you've successfully booted into your new user account, which should be a complete duplicate of your old one.

[teacup]

So if it's by design....would files/docs saved to the "my documents" folder also appear in the "owner" folder? Are they duplicates? And what would happen if files were deleted from the my documents folder - would they also be deleted from the owner folder? What about vice versa - files deleted from the owner folder would also be deleted from the my documents folder?

[Nick Peers]

Yes, but they should be duplicated, so you can verify their existence in the new user account before deleting the old one (or you could archive it to DVD prior to deleting it, just for safety's sake).

If you have another drive or partition, consider moving sensitive folders like My Documents to that drive or folder - just right-click the My Documents folder and choose Properties to get started.