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#16
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User name change
Rene Lamontagne wrote:
Great, Got my profile name back to "Rene" Gotta tell you that is a long process and I screwed up a few times and had to reload my Macrium backup, But finally this morning I got it right and it worked. It's a pain in the ass. You might get the permissions right, might not, and why I let their profile copy wizard with its Permissions button figure out what to do. Plus, you need 3 accounts to do this: and admin account to do the profile copy, the target profile folder for where to copy (which must not be inuse at the time), and the old profile folder (which also must not be inuse at the time). There's also the registry entries to consider. Some specified where is your profile folder, like "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\SID" in its ProfileImagePath data item. To get the security identifier (SID) of your account under which you are logged into, run "wmic useraccount get name,sid". There are a LOT of references to your %userprofile% folder, so hopefully their wizard goes through them to change the references to your new %userprofile% folder. Some registry entries use the %userprofile% environment variable, but some used a fixed string value. Because of all the registry entries pointing to your old account's %userprofile% folder that now need to point to your new account's %userprofile% folder, and because too many programs use fixed or static strings to specify data item values in the registry, you need to run each program to make sure it still works. Alternatively, you could log into the new account, run the wmic command to get your SID, and use regedit to go to HKEY_USERS\SID to search for strings that match on your old account's %userprofile% folder. That would check if Microsoft's process really does copy over the old profile into the new profile and also gets all references in the registry for the new profile pointing at that new profile's folder. There are so many gotchas in this process that often users just change the name of their Windows account and don't bother touching where it is stored on the drive. After all, if you use %userprofile% (with the percent signs to denote an environment variable), like in the address bar of File Explorer, you end up wherever is your profile's folder when you're logged into that Windows account. Not a big deal when you're the only user on the computer, but trying to figure out which profile folder is for which user, especially when the OS or you or they pick names that don't mean much, and especially in worker changeover where someone comes in to take over someone else's work is too much hassle. I learned to use the %userprofile% environment variable long ago, so I don't have to remember where it is. Same for using %appdata%, %localappdata%, and %temp%. It took a lot longer to write that profile copy procedure than it would for me to do it. I tried to be as complete as possible but it was from memory, and nowadays I need more caffeine to fuel those brain cells. I can remember stuff from long ago, but people's names still eludes me. Oh no, they're walking in my direction. Damn, what's their name? Ever get up out of a chair and head somewhere at work or home, get into another room, and wonder "What the hell was I gonna do?" You go back to sit in the chair and then you remember. Proof that your brain cells need pressure to work, and your brain has moved to your ass. I've gone off to go shopping, went into auto-pilot mode, and ended up at work because it was along the way. Why am I going to work on the weekend? |
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#17
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User name change
On 2019-06-27 1:42 p.m., VanguardLH wrote:
Rene Lamontagne wrote: Great, Got my profile name back to "Rene" Gotta tell you that is a long process and I screwed up a few times and had to reload my Macrium backup, But finally this morning I got it right and it worked. It's a pain in the ass. You might get the permissions right, might not, and why I let their profile copy wizard with its Permissions button figure out what to do. Plus, you need 3 accounts to do this: and admin account to do the profile copy, the target profile folder for where to copy (which must not be inuse at the time), and the old profile folder (which also must not be inuse at the time). There's also the registry entries to consider. Some specified where is your profile folder, like "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\SID" in its ProfileImagePath data item. To get the security identifier (SID) of your account under which you are logged into, run "wmic useraccount get name,sid". There are a LOT of references to your %userprofile% folder, so hopefully their wizard goes through them to change the references to your new %userprofile% folder. Some registry entries use the %userprofile% environment variable, but some used a fixed string value. Because of all the registry entries pointing to your old account's %userprofile% folder that now need to point to your new account's %userprofile% folder, and because too many programs use fixed or static strings to specify data item values in the registry, you need to run each program to make sure it still works. Alternatively, you could log into the new account, run the wmic command to get your SID, and use regedit to go to HKEY_USERS\SID to search for strings that match on your old account's %userprofile% folder. That would check if Microsoft's process really does copy over the old profile into the new profile and also gets all references in the registry for the new profile pointing at that new profile's folder. There are so many gotchas in this process that often users just change the name of their Windows account and don't bother touching where it is stored on the drive. After all, if you use %userprofile% (with the percent signs to denote an environment variable), like in the address bar of File Explorer, you end up wherever is your profile's folder when you're logged into that Windows account. Not a big deal when you're the only user on the computer, but trying to figure out which profile folder is for which user, especially when the OS or you or they pick names that don't mean much, and especially in worker changeover where someone comes in to take over someone else's work is too much hassle. I learned to use the %userprofile% environment variable long ago, so I don't have to remember where it is. Same for using %appdata%, %localappdata%, and %temp%. It took a lot longer to write that profile copy procedure than it would for me to do it. I tried to be as complete as possible but it was from memory, and nowadays I need more caffeine to fuel those brain cells. I can remember stuff from long ago, but people's names still eludes me. Oh no, they're walking in my direction. Damn, what's their name? Ever get up out of a chair and head somewhere at work or home, get into another room, and wonder "What the hell was I gonna do?" You go back to sit in the chair and then you remember. Proof that your brain cells need pressure to work, and your brain has moved to your ass. I've gone off to go shopping, went into auto-pilot mode, and ended up at work because it was along the way. Why am I going to work on the weekend? Yes, only my stubbornness to make things right made me do it, I could have just left it as rlamo as I am the only one using this machine, What screwed me up was doing the wrong thing while in the wrong accout. I will watch and make sure that all my programs work over time. Yep, as I get older I tend to forget what I was going to do in the next room, Yet I remember my childhood and what happened even when I was 4 or 5 years old, The farmhouse we lived in, My dad's model T, learning to read when I was 4 and all the other good things from 80 years ago. Have a good upcoming 4th of July. Rene |
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