Amer said:
Malke,
Thanks for the prompt reply, the user that I wanted to rename is the main
Administrator that I created when I setup the Vista in this computer.
Apparently that is my main USER on drive C, I can go to Control Panel >
User Accounts and rename there but it wont change the name in Drive C.
When I go
to Drive C and try to rename, it doesn't give me that option. I have all
my work saved under that particular user and I just do not want to take
any chances to mess up my work which is mostly Digital files. I already
created a new USER in Control Panel > User Accounts but it doesn't give me
an option to transfer files from one User Account to another, should I
just do it from Drive C? and when I delete the Main User Account, should
it be done from Drive C as I do not see any options to delete this Account
from Control Panel. Lastly, would it effect my computer's performance or
starting up in any way?
OK, since you created the user account when you set up the computer, it
isn't the built-in Administrator account. The built-in Administrator
account is disabled by default and unless you purposely enabled it and are
using it, we don't need to worry about it. You probably can't delete the
user account you created because it is the only administrative one on the
system, and naturally it would be foolish to delete it at this point.
Just renaming user profiles doesn't actually change the real user account,
as you have found out. You need to create the new one. I'm not sure why you
feel you need to delete the user account you created. Normally in Vista, I
create user accounts as follows for clients:
1. A Standard user account for the client's daily work. Obviously, if more
than one Standard user account is needed I create them too.
2. An administrative user account for elevation and emergency only. I
usually call it "CompAdmin" or "Tech".
So, here's what I would do for you. Assuming that you created an
administrative user account for yourself (let's call it "Amer"), go to
Control Panel>User Accounts and create the CompAdmin administrative
account. Log into it. Go to Control Panel>User Accounts and change Amer to
a Standard user. Log back into Amer and you're ready to go. All your stuff
is there of course.
If Amer is the wrong name or an ex-significant other or the like, then you
still want to create CompAdmin and log into it. Now go to Control
Panel>User Accounts and create the new user account named the way you want
(we'll call it "RightName" for this example). Now log into the RightName
account to create the profile folders. Log out and back into CompAdmin. The
easiest thing at this point is to just copy your data files from Amer to
RightName using Windows Explorer (navigating to the correct directories and
doing a copy/paste - don't cut!). You'll get a UAC prompt saying you don't
have access to those accounts' files but you can just press "OK" to
continue. Once you've copied the data files from Amer to RightName, you can
(still in CompAdmin) delete Amer if you want from Control Panel>User
Accounts. Just make sure you have everything you want, including Favorites
(Bookmarks for Firefox) and email.
If you really want to copy the entire Amer user account to RightName, here
are two methods to do it:
A. Copy a user account to another with WET (MVP Jimmy Brush)
Using Windows Easy Transfer, simply pretend that your administrator account
is the "old computer" and your new user account is the "new computer".
Also, make sure you manually specify what files to transfer, and only
select the files under the admin user profile - you obviously don't need to
transfer files that are outside of the admin user profile, since they will
be staying the same.
B. Other method:
1. Create the new user account and at least one extra account with
administrative privileges.
2. Log into the new user account and then log into the extra account.
3. Control Panel>System>Advanced>User Profiles>Settings
4. You will see where you can copy user accounts. Copy the old account to
the new one from there. Use the Browse to select your new account (C
\Users\newaccount).
I think Method B is easiest, and you will have already created the extra
account - CompAdmin.
Having more than one user account on the system will not affect your
computer's performance or startup. In fact, not having more than one user
account can come back to bite you if the single daily user account becomes
corrupted.
HTH,
Malke
