User Profile Folder - Change User Account Folder Name

How to Change the User Folder Name of a User Profile in Windows 7​

   Information

Normally, you could change your account name in User Accounts from the Control Panel (icons view), but that still would not change your accoun's user profile folder name in C:\Users.

This will show you how to change your account name and change the user profile folder name of any user account, including the built-in Administrator account (if enabled), in Windows 7 without losing anything in that user account. This will affect the user account's name for the C:\Users\(user-name) folder, Start Menu, Log on screen, Welcome screen, security permissions, etc......

You must be logged in as an administrator, and is a different account than the account you are changing the name of to be able to do this tutorial.

   Warning

Since editing a user profile and the registry can mess up Windows 7 if a mistake is made, it is highly advisable to create a restore point before doing this tutorial. This way if you make a mistake, you will be able to simply do a system restore to select and go back to this restore point to undo the mistake.

Here's How:

1. Log on to the user account (ex: Old Name) that you want to change the name of.

2. Save the current theme (ex: Old Name) for this user account. (see screenshot below)
NOTE: This is so that you will be able to change the theme back to this current theme in step 21 below later if you like.

3. If you have any files or folders in your C:\Users\(user-name) profile folder that are set to be shared, then you will need to temporarily set them to not be shared for now. After you finish renaming the user profile folder name, you could set them to be shared again in step 23 below.

4. Log off the user account that you want to change the name of. (see screenshot below)
NOTE: If you do not have another administrator account to use, then create a new administrator account first, then log off. When finished with the tutorial, you can delete this newly created account.

5. Log on to an administrator account that is not the user account that you want to change the name of.

6. Open Windows Explorer, navigate to C:\Users, open the Users folder, right click on the user profile folder (ex: Old Name) that you want to change the name of, and click on Rename. (see screenshot below)

7. Type in the name (ex: New Name) that you want this user account's folder to have now and press Enter. Close the Windows Explorer window. (see screenshot below)
NOTE: If you are not able to rename the user folder for some reason (ex: in use), then boot into Safe Mode and try again.

8. If prompted, click on Continue and Yes (UAC) to approve renaming the user folder.

9. Open the Start Menu, and type regedit in the search box and press Enter.

10. If prompted by UAC, then click on Yes.

11. In regedit, navigate to the location below. (see screenshot below)

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList

12. In the left pane of regedit, expand Profilelist, and select each long number S-1-5-.... key one by one until your see the user account name (ex: Old Name) that you want to change the name of included in the Data column of ProfileImagePath in the right pane. (see screenshot above)

13. In the right pane of the long number S-1-5-.... key for the user account (ex: Old Name) that you want to change the name of, right click on ProfileImagePath, and click on Modify. (see screenshot below.

14. Change only the name (ex: Old Name) in the full path to the name (ex: New Name) that you want for the user account, and click on OK. (see screenshot below)

15. Close regedit.

16. Press the Windows + R keys to open the Run dialog, type netplwiz, and click on OK. (see screenshot below)

17. Check the Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer box, select the user account's old name (ex: Old Name), and click on the Properties button. (see screenshot below)

18. Change both the User name and Full name to the same new name (ex: New Name) from step 7 above, and click on OK. (see screenshot below)

19. Click on OK, and Restart the computer to apply. (see screenshot below step 17)

20. Log on to the now completely renamed user account (ex: New Name) from step 1 above.

21. When you log on to the renamed user account (ex: New Name) for the first time, you will notice that the desktop background wallpaper is now solid black. This is normal. Change the theme from the black Unsaved Theme to the theme (ex: Old Name) that you saved in step 2 above to restore the saved theme. (see screenshot below)

22. If you had to create a new administrator account at step 4 above to do this tutorial with, then you can now delete this newly created account if you like. This is not the New Name account.

23. If you had to set files to not be shared in step 3 above, then you can set them to be shared again if you like.

24. If you had Windows set to automatically log on to a user account at startup, then you can set that while logged on to an administrator account again if you like.




That's it,
Shawn

Related Tutorials

---

• Fix "The User Profile Service failed the logon. User profile cannot be loaded." Error in Windows 7
• How to Fix the Error "Your user profile was not loaded correctly! You have been logged on with a temporary profile."
• How to Rename the Windows 7 Guest Account
• How to Rename the Windows 7 Built-in Administrator Account
• How to Create a User Account in Windows 7​
• How to Change Your User Account Picture in Windows 7
• How to Create a Password for a Windows 7 User Account
• How to Change a User Account Type in Windows 7
• How to Change the Default Location of Windows 7 User Folders
• How to Restore the Default Location of Windows 7 User Folders
• How to Change the Windows 7 Default User Folder Icons
• How to Change the Default Location of a User Profile in Windows 7 and Vista
• How to Add or Remove "User Folder" from Desktop Context Menu
• How to Create User Accounts on another Partition or Disk During Windows 7 Installation

 

[Kath]

Nope, it gives the same message, saying that they can't find the file.

 

[Brink]

In that case, I would recommend to reverse the process to restore it back to default.

 

[Kath]

I did a restore and lost all my files, what do I do ?

 

[Brink]

If you used a restore point created right before doing the tutorial, I'm not sure how you would lose the files. Are they not listed in either location?

 

[Kath]

Nevermind I found them. Thanks for the help !

 

[Brink]

Great news.

 

[Tima I]

Greatly appreciated! Very helpful.

 

[Brink]

You're most welcome Tima, and welcome to Seven Forums. I'm glad it could help.

 

[VJK]

Excellent work Shawn! Thank you very much for your great help and these are not even in Microsoft windows official website.

 

[kaushikbbr]

Error after changing Local folder name

Hi Shawn,

I have followed all your steps from the page "User Profile Folder - Change User Account Folder Name - Windows 7 Help Forums" At step 4 i had to create a new admin account. Now after pressing windows key and typing Accounts and when i select "User Accounts" it is giving me the following error. Please help! I have attached the error as an attachment. Please
help me out.

keerthi - is the old name of the local account

Regards

Kaushik

 

[Brink]

Hello Kaushik, and welcome to Seven Forums.

At step 4, you haven't done anything to the account yet, so this must have been a previous issue.

You might see if doing a system restore using a restore point dated before you had this issue may be able to undo and fix it.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/700-system-restore.html

 

[iamc3k]

Brink,

Once again, one of your tutorials saved my day. Thanks. I needed to change a user profile name. Heck, I may as well just start naming them "Brink"!

Thanks,
Ken

 

[Brink]

 

[elhay]

whoami reports the uid after name change

Hi

Thank you very much for the excellent instructions on how to change a name. I successfully followed your clear instructions and almost everything I need changed.

There's one (small) thing that I would appreciate advice about if it's not too much trouble. It's not a big deal for me but I would like to have it right if possible.

After the name change, the 'whoami' instruction still returns the old account name. Is it a simple matter to fix that?

Thank you kindly for your help
S

 

[Brink]

Hello elhay, and welcome to Seven Forums.

I'm afraid the only way that I know of to change whoami is to create a new account with the name you want, and delete the old account when you like.

 

[elhay]

Bah humbug

Thanks for the rapid reply. It's not the answer I wanted but what can one do?

 

[Galane]

I searched the Registry for all instances of the old account name and changed them to the new name. Lots of pointers to stuff in the old Users name path. With that done, I rebooted, clicked the new user name icon and the theme was the same. Everything the same. Nothing confused by the loss of the path to where it was installed or runs from.

 

[ja09]

I had attempted to change the name, but was unaware that i needed to create another administrative account. When i restarted my computer, it wont let me log into my regular account and has set me up on a temporary account. I cannot access internet, have none of my files, and have no idea what to do! Please help!

 

[Brink]

Hello ja09, and welcome to Seven Forums.

You should be able to do a system restore at boot using a restore point dated before you did this to undo it.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/700-system-restore.html

 

[Galane]

After I did this on Windows 7 Starter, and went through the Registry to edit all the references from the old name to the new name, it fouled up Windows Update. Some parts of WU wouldn't automatically run and Windows failed to acknowledge they were running after manually starting them.

Fixing it involved a combination of Registry hacks to fix the not running automatically and deleting the update catalog files to force WU to redownload ALL the updates. This was complicated by Starter having some differences (like some files and folders that don't exist) from all other versions of 7, and there being no Starter specific how-to's for fixing broken WU on Starter.

Microsoft's Windows Update FixIt for Windows 7 *failed to fix this* on 7 Starter. It would end with a note that it failed but gave no clue as to the real nature of the problem and did not offer a way to use an advanced or aggressive mode.

Still took less time than using the netbook's recovery partition to wipe it and reinstall everything.