Renaming a user’s profile folder in Windows.
If I want to rename a user from “Mike Diehn” to “mdiehn”
Log the user out.
Log in as an Administrator, preferably in the realm in which the user account is defined rather than simply in the local computer realm.
Manage Local Users and Group
Rename the user account, maybe fill in the Full Name and put the old username in the description field so you’ll have it later if you need it.
Find the user’s profile folder, usually in “C:\Documents and Settings” and rename it. Maybe you wanna make a copy of it first, but this isn’t awful to recover from.
Start regedit “Start->Run->”regedit”->
Find this key:
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList
In the key is a list of keys named as the SID for each user on the machine, local or not. In those SID named keys, the value named “ProfileImagePath” contains as it’s data the pathname of the folder holding the user’s profile. Find the one that had the pathname you recognize as the “old” username and change it.
Log out Administrator
Log in the user with it’s new username.