Re: Profile/My Documents issue

Bob S wrote:
I'm setting up my new Dell Computer with WinXP. On the first
day a bunch of programs disappeared from the system tray,
although they were still running in the background. Dell
tech support said that the way the problem was showing
itself seemed somewhat unique (we worked on it for an hour,
it seemed). They said that the profile evidently was
corrupted, and they recommended that since I had not yet
installed very many programs and had not transferred any
data as yet, the best solution was simply to delete my user
profile and start over. Sounded fine to me. We did it
several days ago and everything now works ok.

Here's the only issue. In the original set up I named my
user account "Bob." The way Dell approached the issue was to
first create a new account, which they called "Test." They
then deleted the old "Bob" profile and renamed "Test" as
"Bob."

As stated, the new profile is now fine. But the path to My
Documents is now through "Test" rather than through "Bob":
that is, it's located at "C:\Documents and Settings\Test\My
Documents," even though when I look in User Accounts through
the Control Panel the account appears as "Bob." Dell tells
me that this is because My Documents keeps the path name as
originally set up, and that nothing can be done about it.

Now when I do things that require a path name through My
Documents, I have to use "Test," not "Bob." This is a petty
annoyance, but an annoyance nonetheless.

This is the way that user accounts in Windows work. Renaming a user account is only cosmetic; all the underlying files and folders will retain the name of the original user account (Test in your case). You can either live with this or:

1. Rename the user account back to Test.

2. Create another user account called Bob. Log into this account once.

3. Now log into the built-in Administrator account. If you have XP Home you'll need to go into Safe Mode* to do this. If you have XP Pro, do Ctrl-Alt-Del at the Welcome Screen to get the classic logon box where you can type in "Administrator" (without the quotes). Unless you changed it, the default password is a blank.

4. Follow the instructions at this link to copy the Test account's data and settings to the new Bob account.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=811151

5. After you've done that, log into the new Bob account and see all your stuff. When you are sure you have everything, you can then go back to the Test account and delete the data or delete the account. I don't suggest deleting the account because having an extra user account just makes things easier to recover if your daily user account gets corrupted. If you are the only user on the computer and want to automatically logon to your account and not see the Welcome Screen with the extra account, this is easily done:

Configure Windows to Automatically Login (MVP Ramesh) - http://windowsxp.mvps.org/Autologon.htm

*To get into Safe Mode, repeatedly tap the F8 key as the computer is starting up. This will get you to the right menu. Navigate using your Up arrow key; the mouse will not work here. Once in Safe Mode, you will see the normally hidden Administrator account. The default password is a blank.


Malke
--
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
"Don't Panic!"
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User
.

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