Windows 10: How To Change Your User Name & Rename Account Profile Folder (step-by-step tutorial)

In Windows 10, you can change your account name through the Control Panel. But what if you also want to rename your user profile folder to match? In this video, I'll show you how to accomplish both tasks (for local accounts) in an easy step-by-step tutorial.

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STEP 1: Change your user name in Control Panel.

STEP 2: Enable the Windows 10 hidden Administrator account.

STEP 3: Log out of your current account and log into the new Administrator account.

STEP 4: Go to [your hard drive letter]\Users, and rename your user profile folder.

STEP 5: Open the Registry Editor, and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList.

STEP 6: Find the folder under ProfileList where the value of ProfileImagePath corresponds to the old name of your user profile folder. Change its value to match the new name.

STEP 7: For security's sake, deactivate the Administrator account.

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If you enjoyed this video, please SUBSCRIBE to my channel! I'm HandyAndy and thanks for watching.

[satrapis]

There is a "catch" of doing this. All the desktop/documents/appdata aplications won't work after renaming your user name. U have to manually rename your old username in all apps/programs via regedit and it will take a long time. This method is good when u don't have apps/programs or u have a fresh windows 10 install.

[pernel]

Wow thank you very much Andy. Gone through a whole lots of other videos but were much too complicated until I found yours. God bless you and thanks again.

[Pert]

Ah the pain of having entered gibberish as my username when I first set up my pc is finally, FINALLY gone after 2+ years. Thank you Andy and god bless you!

[superwalter]

Dude, you were the only one that worked, I looked for videos from my country with my own language, videos in English and all of them were always the same and I couldn't change the name of the folder, I had problems because the oculus apps of virtual reality don't accept names with spaces so I had to change it, if it wasn't for you I would never be able to install and play with my VR on the pc.

[kitlin]

Thank you!!! Way quicker and easier than other tutorials!!!

[tburton]

Just a clarification - i understand you also need to change every instance of C:\users\Andrew in the registry to Andy, not just in the profilelist. Sure that will change the folder name, but any installed programs by your name before you changed may give you problems.

[fungames]

Finally, a video that shows u how to change the registries. Thank you, great video!

[GeorgeLendelPe]

Thanks a lot! I have watched many videos, but this one actually helped me change my typo username "Georg". It still works as of 2024.

[knowyourjoe]

Thank You SO MUCH FOR MAKING THIS !!! Have struggled for hours on a complicated install with the issue being a space in the user directory name. This has been addressed and now I can continue with the regular scheduled insanity. 😂🤣😂 Wish you had a tutorial on what I am attempting to install. Lol. I believe it would not be near as complicated. Thanks again. I am subscribing and recommending this channel to some family and friends.

[rolfmoeckli]

Very good video, thanks. One tip <create a Restore Point> before doing the changes, if anything went wrong simply restore.

[klaussandiger]

While setting an account name I used polish special sign and my PC went crazy when downloading apps
Thanks for the video

[thrillingd]

10000x easier than other tutorials! thanks! subbed!

[Taz]

This works great! One item I stumbled into....

The video leaves out that once you execute the first step and rename the username, windows may not allow you to use the admin account to rename the files.?

If you get a " cannot rename because files are open" error open task manager and select the users tab and disconnect to close the files on the username with the error message. Then close task manager and try again. It will work perfectly!

[Medacek]

What about my data and programs? Would it remain untouched and working? Because my user folder name has a special character "ž" in it and that breaks multiple programs.

[jainendra]

When I am logging in as administrator and renaming it, it says "can't rename folder is open in another program". However, it's not open.
Any idea how to solve this issue?

[Lazlo.]

Super helpful, thank you.
Do I need to delete the Administrator user profile?

[dzajakeks]

Thank you, it's working, deserves tons of support on this video <3

[Mathik]

Thank you brother ❤
You made it very easy while everyone complicating the process..

[hungryzhou]

I've done all steps of you instrustion. But my old name folder keeps poping up under User every time I log in my current account, any ideas?

[raikou]

I don't have the "change account name" option available. I only see 3 options not 4. What do I do then?