window 10 upgrade messed up my user folder name!

tweedie

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Jul 26, 2013
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I am ripping my hair out on this little weird problem!

I upgraded my sp3 to windows 10 and everything appears to be fine. then when I went to debug my visual studio apps, my solution wasn't able to find some files.

Turned out that my user folder name has truncated its last character of its name! ie "c:\users\darren" became "c:\users\darre". Honestly I don't recall adding my name details apart from entering my usual email address when upgrading. I can't seem to rename "darre" to "darren" folder. my user profile all points to "darren", so I have no idea where "darre" came from!

thinking, I must be going crazy and perhaps I had a name "darre" without realising, so I looked into c:\windows.old\users and there is a "darren" folder"

How the bleeding hell can I rename my user folder? Has anyone noticed the missing last character of the user folder name?
 

tweedie

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Well that is weird. clearly doesn't like the name "darren"!

I did a total factory reset back to windows 8.1. Has a folder c:\users\darren. Then proceeded to do an upgrade but with "copy nothing" so that its a clean install. After finally installing win10, probably for the 4th time.... its......."c:\users\darre"

!!?!?!

dunno why. did a rename account instead as per guide (http://www.instantfundas.com/2013/01/how-to-rename-user-folder-in-windows-8.html) seem to work.

but I am definitely interested if there is any other "darren"s out there that had been renamed to "darre"!
 

tweedie

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Well that is weird. clearly doesn't like the name "darren"!

I did a total factory reset back to windows 8.1. Has a folder c:\users\darren. Then proceeded to do an upgrade but with "copy nothing" so that its a clean install. After finally installing win10, probably for the 4th time.... its......."c:\users\darre"

!!?!?!

dunno why. did a rename account instead as per guide (How to Rename the User Folder in Windows 8? - Instant Fundas) seem to work.

but I am definitely interested if there is any other "darren"s out there that had been renamed to "darre"!
 

Guzzler3

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Yep, royal pain isn't it?!?!?!?!?

In the past (xp, Win7, etc.) to rename a users folder, you have to log in with a local administrator account. Rename the directory, then do a registry search for the old directory path and replace.

But you might be able to just search the registry for the bad path name and replace it with the new path....
 

tweedie

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Well, this is very interesting. I installed win10 on another laptop, but time, its previous user folder name was "tweedie". Linked it up to my hotmail account when I did a clean install of win10, and "darre" came back!. Since I've never entered my name, only my hotmail account, it must be that somewhere in hotmail its storing my incorrect name "darre" though I don't see it my profiles settings. hmmm
 

Deivo Ryman

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Whatever you do, don't make changes to your registry as instructed on other websites.

It will not work!

They say change the name in the registry on the path:
"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\ProfileImagePath ".

If you do this, "Search" shown in the list when you right click on the Start Button, will not work. Change the username in the registry and when you click "Search" nothing will happen. To get the search function back you will have to change the username back as it was originally.

The change to the username you want is a path not recognized by the search function, so there is no real way you can change the folder name.

I have two laptops both running Windows 10. On one, the folder name is correct. On the other the folder name is wrong. However, the Local Account, Administrator is the same on both laptops. One has the folder named as the local account administrator. The other laptop has the folder named with my Microsoft username and has a stupid "_000" at the end.

Even if you create a new folder with the name you want, the Document and Picture folders will still be located in the folder with the wrong name. Unfortunately, it is something we have to live with. Microsoft is like that. It has a history of never getting anything running correctly.

What is weird is how the same operating system can work in different ways.
 

tweedie

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In the end, I had to reinstall win10 but this time set up a local account (so that the correct named folder appears), then link it to hotmail (via the user account dialog). not perfect, but a work around for me.
 

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