Solved How can I change my account name properly?

[Toydotgam]

Hi, I wish to change my Windows account name from Matthew to Toydotgam, I know you "can" in Control Panel, but I want to also have my user folder name changed and for the registry to accept this as the new name. (I have a registry key which hides my profile from the welcome screen, and it looks for Matthew, I want to change my profile name, and the key, so it's looking for Toydotgam instead, and it works properly, using Control Panel does not help this)

Maybe there is a way I can just create a new account and migrate all of my data, and settings to the new one whilst resetting the old one to default?

 

[Brink]

Hello Toydotgam,

You can safely use the method in the tutorial below to change the name of a user profile folder.

User Profile Folder - Change User Account Folder Name

 

[Megahertz07]

Hello Toydotgam,

You can safely use the method in the tutorial below to change the name of a user profile folder.

User Profile Folder - Change User Account Folder Name

Brink, when logging as the "new user" don't you need to take ownership of the files as they were created by the "old user"?

 

[Brink]

Brink, when logging as the "new user" don't you need to take ownership of the files as they were created by the "old user"?

If it's an administrator account, you shouldn't need to for doing the steps in the tutorial.

 

[Megahertz07]

If it's an administrator account, you shouldn't need to for doing the steps in the tutorial.

Thanks

 

[Toydotgam]

Thanks for the tutorial, it helped out a lot!
I think I am going to abandon the old user profile as doing Win+R and typing in control or explorer comes up with some weird errors, the Control Panel section in the start menu comes up as (empty) and the system has also been running slowly at idle (I don't have any bloatware installed and the only third-party app I have running the background is f.lux, stopping it does not free up resources). I'm thinking of looking to a way of migrating the old data to a new profile, then deleting the old one.

 

[Toydotgam]

Update: I've used Windows Easy Transfer and fiddled it to move my data to another user account, I've got quick toggles for hiding my new account from the welcome screen, and now I'm reinstalling a small amount of my applications that broke and moving my browser preferences and history across; I'm also deleting the data from the old account and starting it anew.

Thanks for the help!

 

[Brink]

Great news.