New User/Owner Name

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
  • Start date Start date
G

Guest

Greetings,

Upgraded from WIN ME hell to WIN XP Pro. Was hoping to change the 'owner'
name from 'Brit Jones' (fake but nice ring) to 'Baby Face' (not really, but
you get the idea).

I really want my real name off of the system and hence all the damn cookies
and everything else.

In System, it says the owner is: laptop/Brit Jones. Where do I go to change
this? Or do I have to do a clean install of XP instead of an upgrade?
((Sure to be two days of my life, I'm now trying to figure out how to add
back in all the email folders that didn't transfer with Outlook Express.))

Thanks,
Baby Face
 
DesertFey said:
Greetings,

Upgraded from WIN ME hell to WIN XP Pro. Was hoping to change the
'owner'
name from 'Brit Jones' (fake but nice ring) to 'Baby Face' (not
really, but
you get the idea).

I really want my real name off of the system and hence all the damn
cookies
and everything else.

In System, it says the owner is: laptop/Brit Jones. Where do I go to
change
this? Or do I have to do a clean install of XP instead of an upgrade?
((Sure to be two days of my life, I'm now trying to figure out how to
add
back in all the email folders that didn't transfer with Outlook
Express.))

Thanks,
Baby Face
Click to expand...


Right-click on My Computer, select properties, and check under the
"Registered to:" section for the owner and organization names. Then
search the registry for these strings. Although Windows has them in
registry for its own use, many applications will copy these strings for
username and companyname in the registry keys for those products. So
these strings will be scattered throughout the registry. Since these
are static values (i.e., they are not links back to the values used by
Windows itself), you're stuck with searching and changing.

I don't know if the ChangeOwnerOrg.exe utility mentioned in the link
provided by DesertFey looks for all occurrences of the strings used by
Windows to find where they also got copied into other registry keys for
whatever software you have installed. I believe the initial registry
keys that get set when you specify owner and organization are:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion
RegisteredOrganization
RegisteredOwner

But after you have installed other software and used your system for
awhile, these strings will be scattered throughout the registry.
Hunting around the registry and changing the data values one at a time
using regedit.exe can be a real pain. RegHance (from Lavasoft who makes
Ad-Aware) can search the entire registry to find all matches for the
specified string. Make sure to select to search the entire registry. I
believe it also lets you enter the new value and have it apply against
all matches.
 
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