software

Changing WindowsXP username while keeping the existing apps intact

Nov 26, 2006 by Aleksandar Vacić 2 minute read

…as in: still keeping as much of your settings and data as possible. When XP is installing, at one point it asks you for the name of the user(s) that should be created. What you actually type will be usernames, which I like to keep short and sweet. I typed in my full name and realized what I did after I installed most of my everyday apps. Blindly copying from the backup did not work, as they had the old path written all over the place. Time to dig…

Here is the procedure that worked for the apps I had at the time. You mileage may vary…

1. Do not touch the original folder

2. Create new user, give him the same rights as the old one

3. Login with new user

4. Log off new user

5. Login as administrator

6. Rename Documents and Settings\NEWUSER to something unique (add 2 before NEWUSER)

7. Rename Documents and Settings\OLDUSER to Documents and Settings\NEWUSER

8. Login as NEWUSER

9. Open registry

10. Replace all occurences of OLDUSER with NEWUSER

Firefox tweaks

Do the step 10 (search & replace) in these files:

• c:\Documents and Settings\OLDUSER\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\nw97e6on.default\compreg.dat

• c:\Documents and Settings\OLDUSER\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\nw97e6on.default\extensions.ini

• c:\Documents and Settings\OLDUSER\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\nw97e6on.default\secmod.d```objectivec

Profile name will of course be different for you.

Thunderbird tweaks

Do the step 10 (search & replace) in this file:

• c:\Documents and Settings\OLDUSER\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\gmclkm48.default\extensions.ini

Profile name will of course be different for you.

MSN Messenger tweaks

Do the step 10 (search & replace) in these files:

• c:\Documents and Settings\OLDUSER\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Messenger\EMAIL\SharingMetadata\Logs\Dfsr.log

• c:\Documents and Settings\OLDUSER\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Messenger\EMAIL\SharingMetadata\volume.xml

• c:\Documents and Settings\OLDUSER\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Messenger\EMAIL\SharingMetadata\volume.xml~

• c:\Documents and Settings\OLDUSER\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Messenger\EMAIL\SharingMetadata\Working\database_4C54_A5A2_54A5_8EF0\fsr.chk

• c:\Documents and Settings\OLDUSER\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Messenger\EMAIL\SharingMetadata\Working\database_4C54_A5A2_54A5_8EF0\fsr.log

• c:\Documents and Settings\OLDUSER\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Messenger\EMAIL\SharingMetadata\Working\database_4C54_A5A2_54A5_8EF0\fsr00002.log

database_XX will of course be different in your case.

General idea is to look where the old username might be used and if that resembles a file path, change it into new path. If you have done the similar, for some other app, please let me know, it might be useful at some point in the future.