Windows 7: How do I rename the C:/Users/Owner folder safely?

Suppose the computer formerly belonged to Jane and so there is a directory named C:/Users/Jane. Now the computer belongs to Mary. Somehow I manged to rename the visible folder name - the one that appears with the icon - from Jane to Mary but in the file system the directory is still called C:/Users/Jane. Is there anyway to safely change this without inconvenient side-effects? The goal is to have it be C:/Users/Mary.



This problem is on a netbook with Windows 7 Starter (32 bit).

Clean install of the os, then it wipes the hdd and starts anew with Mary's name.

Hello Broiyan,

The tutorial below can help show you how to change the name of the C:\Users\(user-name) folder, but I would strongly recommend to do a clean install of Windows Smitty posted above since this computer was used and there's no telling what may be on it that you do not know about.

User Profile Folder - Change User Account Folder Name

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Set up another user.. (Mary). Make sure you give the proper rights to Mary (administrator).

Don't forget to copy any user specific desktop items from Jane to Mary.

Log off, now log back on using Mary.

Now... delete the user Jane

Barryware's suggestion was what I used. However, I was logged in as Mary (the new admin) when I did it. Then when I tried to delete the old admin (Jane) I got a complaint that I was logged in as the old admin. That didn't make sense but anyway the old admin did get deleted. I'm done. Thanks to all that replied.