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By default windows 10 Home has very weird system of how to choose the usernames when you create a new user in the system(in particular during intial set up).

So, when I set up my new windows 10 Home system it selected username as Foo. However, I want it to be Bar. So, according to this description I change the name of my main user account and its folder in particular. Also in resgistry I cleaned up all mentions of old Foo account and changed it to Bar(of course where it was possible). However, system variable %USERNAME% still gives me Foo when I echo it in the console(of course I rebooted after all my changes). In registry I see that system variable USERNAME is equal to SYSTEM, but I do not know from where the old user account name Foo appears when I try to echo its value. What does SYSTEM mean and how can I change the value of USERNAME variable?

P.S. the value of USERPROFILE variable shows correct value of C:\Users\Bar

maks
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    One thing you can do is change the NAME of the computer to something sensible to you. This helps when creating nw user accounts. The registry is most definitely not a user tool. Making profile changes here can cause errors in the profile that require its deletion and creation of a new profile. – John Apr 16 '20 at 22:35
  • computer name can be changed very easily and I alreadt did it. One thing that I noticed there is such notion as User profile. And that user profile has an old account name in its part. Specifically profile is name as: ComputerName/OldUserAccountName and there is no any option to chnage it – maks Apr 16 '20 at 22:38
  • You cannot change a user name. Only a user's display name. – Mark Apr 16 '20 at 22:46
  • Yes, and if you look in Profile settings (Advanced System Settings) you cannot change the profile name. I set up with a Local Account first (and a good computer name) and then make my main Microsoft Account second. That has helped me. – John Apr 16 '20 at 22:48
  • If you are willing to do this, you can start fresh with a Local Account of your choice and then change this account to a Microsoft Account. That works better overall. – John Apr 16 '20 at 23:23
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    This is a long standing bug (https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/changing-user-folder-name-windows10/77a01554-1002-48f4-91c8-f438862df771) , so if this really bugs you, then you need to make a new account of your choice – John Apr 16 '20 at 23:40
  • @John thanks for sharing that link with me. The command netplwiz helped(I couldn't navigate that menu from the settings). I've read the discussion and not sure why they said that it's not possible to change the account name and account's folder name. Actually the process of changing the account's folder name is described in the link that I presented in my original post. And with help of netplwiz I managed to change actual username, so now echo %USERNAME% gives me Bar as I wanted. The only drawback: I had to reinstall Dropbox(in contrast Google Drive required only reconfiguration) – maks Apr 17 '20 at 00:46
  • If I post my answer, will you acknowledge it? – John Apr 17 '20 at 00:50
  • @John yes, go ahead. (By the way, didn't I miss anything in the process? Myabe there are some pitfalls which I've not encountered yet?) – maks Apr 17 '20 at 00:52
  • I did not see any errors in your posts above - Thanks – John Apr 17 '20 at 00:58

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One thing you can do is change the NAME of the computer to something sensible to you. This helps when creating new user accounts.

What I found in looking is that this is a long standing bug https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/changing-user-folder-name-windows10/77a01554-1002-48f4-91c8-f438862df771

So one thing you can do is make a new account of your choice.

John
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  • for anybody, who is encountering this problem, also take into account this https://superuser.com/questions/890812/how-to-rename-the-user-folder-in-windows-10#answer-1346983 (+ netplwiz command) – maks Apr 17 '20 at 00:58
  • Thank you for your work on this issue. Others will appreciate it. – John Apr 17 '20 at 01:02