Change Your User Account Name In Windows XP
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Once your user account is created, you are not stuck with the same name forever. Windows XP does allow you to change the name of your user account. For example, if your user account name has been JDoe for the past year, you can rename the account to JohnD without having to delete and recreate the account.
To rename a user account in Windows XP:
- Click the Start button.
- Click the Control Panel.
- Double click the User Accounts applet.
- Under the heading “Or pick an account to change,” click your user account name.
- Click the Change my name option.
- Type in a new account name and click the Change Name button.
12 Comments
Danny Foerster
December 22nd, 2006
at 5:43pm
This only changes the display name it does not change the account name behind the scenes.
Steve Ransom
March 22nd, 2007
at 11:43pm
Superficial solution at best. Doesn’t change he underlying login account so you’d have to ask “what’s the point”.
Ivan Stein
April 5th, 2007
at 12:46am
For example …
In Documents and Settings there is directory with the name JDoe (Documents and Settings\JDoe\ with all subdirectories).
If I wish to change the user name from JDoe to DonaldDuck I can do it through the Control Pannel-UserAccounts but thats only cosmetics.
Documents and Settings\JDoe\ will still remain unchanged.
The question is:
how to change Documents and Settings\JDoe\ into Documents and Settings\DonaldDuck\ - when I wish to change the user I wish to change the name of the directory as well.
LB
April 10th, 2007
at 2:51am
I have the same problem. Does anyone know a solution?
Tom
May 17th, 2007
at 12:35pm
Follow these instructions…
http://www.pcanswers.co.uk/tips/default.asp?pagetypeid=2&articleid=38320&subsectionid=616
Robbie
June 18th, 2007
at 12:23pm
Tom,
How do you start you window in safe mode?
MAB
July 23rd, 2007
at 3:40am
Robbie, shutdown and then press F8 during computer restart. That will give you access to the safe mode option.
MAB
July 23rd, 2007
at 3:43am
And Tom: thanks!
Kenny Sellers
November 10th, 2007
at 7:14am
I followed the instructions for changing the original User name in Windows XP but when I started Windows in Safe Mode I did not have the option to COPY TO on the account that I won’t to remove.
HyperHacker
February 26th, 2008
at 12:56am
I just wanted to point this out. For some reason when I tried to rename my account, no “Change my name” option would appear. There is another way to change the displayed name. Go to Start, Run, enter “control userpasswords2″, hit OK. Click the Advanced button in the Advanced tab, select Users, find your account, right-click, select Properties, and enter anything under Full Name. You can even put things like backslashes here which you can’t do with the “real” account names. After a reboot this name is displayed in place of the account’s actual name. The actual account name isn’t changed, though, so you still have to use it for accessing things in Documents and Settings and logging in with the “classic” username/password prompt. The change is purely visual.
This works at least on WinXP SP2. Don’t know about any others.
cisco
May 13th, 2008
at 4:49pm
i really received exactly the information i needed. this was most helplful, and answered my question to the tee!
Warm Regards,
cisco..
Brian
June 21st, 2008
at 5:26pm
The method in the link Tom gave works fine. But watch out if your My Documents folder is huge (e.g. full of music in My Music and videos in My Videos) because they are all copied to a new folder in the process. If you have lots of media files it might be best moving them somewhere else before copying your profile.