Thanks for your continued help, Nightowl!
Hi Prof, you are very welcome
Sorry I am so tardy in replying, but I didn't get an email notification of a
reply, and just decided to check manually today.
I didn't even notice the mistyping of 'control'. I tried it again, and now
it took me to a User Accounts page I've never seen before. I see two Users
that are not listed in the User Accounts page accessible form the Contol
Panel: Administrator and Christianname. The Administrator user is described
as: 'Built-in account for administering the computer/domain'. Both users are
in the Administrators Group.
OK, good, that's put one of my fears to rest -- your built-in
Administrator is still there
The fact that Christianname is there and listed as a user is not so
good, and puzzling. . . Without trying to confuse you, the fact that
when you're logged in as UN2 and you type %userprofile% in the Start >
Run box it takes you to C:\docs and settings\Christianname means that
your account name/profile is Christianname.
If there is a *user* Christianname as well, is it also sharing that same
profile? That's what I don't know. . . I think it should be all right as
long as you don't try to delete or change Christianname at all until
after you've successfully copied the profile.
Wow! I thought I knew a bit about my computer, but here's something
completely unexpected. Why are there 2 User Accounts pages, and why doesn't
it say anything about the second one in 'Help and Support'?
Hmm, I have to say I really don't know
Userpasswords2 can be very
handy, though, and there is a tweak on Kelly's site to add it to the
Control Panel if you want.
I think I know how to change 'Christianname' to 'UN2", but I won't do it
until I hear again from you, since I don't know what would happen if I
renamed 'Christianname' to 'UN2', since that would make 2 User Accounts with
the name 'UN2'.
No, no, please don't do that! It could cause a terrible muddle! What you
need to do is copy your current profile to a new one which is named the
way you want it, and there is a special procedure for doing this.
Basically you copy A (Christianname) to B (a new user you have created,
which will become your new main account) while logged in as C (who must
be an administrator). So first, if you want your eventual username and
profile to be called UN2, you will need to rename your current UN2 user;
that's so you can use that name for the new account you'll create to
which the profile will be copied. When you've created the account you
need to log in to it once, which creates the folders in its profile.
Then log out of it again; you must not be logged in to either A or B
while you do the copying.
Usually people log in as the Administrator to perform the actual
procedure, but as I think you said you have XP Home, this means you'd
have to do it in Safe Mode. If you'd rather avoid that, create a second
temporary new user with administrator status and use that account to do
the work.
Then you just follow the instructions here (from "Copy files. . .":
How to copy data from a corrupted user profile to a new profile
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;811151
where Old_username will be Christianname, and New_username the new UN2
account you've created;
or here
Copy a User Profile
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/win_xp_logon.htm
If you use the Microsoft article method, and you use OE, do note what it
says about migrating your emails and address book before deleting the
old profile. In any case, I'd advise you to wait a day or so, or at
least a few hours! before deleting the old profiles and unwanted users,
so you can make sure everything is working and where it should be. Then
if for some reason something went wrong, you still have your old account
to go back to.
Do please be careful and if you possibly can back up everything in
C:\Documents and Settings beforehand.
Good luck, let me know how it goes!