User profiles in Windows on the most of computers are usually located in the folder C:\users\.

By default, the user folder name is the same as you user name.

But if you change your user name, the old name of your user folder will remain and you may want to rename it as well.

The renaming of the user folder in Windows is not so straightforward, but i will show how to do this in a quick, safe and easy way.

Cool Tip: How to change user name of a local account in Windows! Read more →

Rename User Folder in Windows

1. Log in by using another administrative account. If you don’t have one, then to create it press ⊞ Win keybutton to open the Start menu, type in cmd to search for the Command Prompt and press Ctrl + Shift + Enter to start it as administrator.

   In the elevated Command Prompt, execute the following commands to create a local user account, set the password and add it to the local “Administrators” group:

   C:\> net user <admin_account_name> /add
   C:\> net user <admin_account_name> <password> /add
   C:\> net localgroup Administrators <admin_account_name> /add

2. Once you have logged in as another administrator, run the following command from the Command Prompt to find out a security identifier (SID) of your user account:

   C:\> wmic useraccount get name,sid
   - sample output -
   Name                SID
   admin               S-1-5-21-615456588-3658538152-758053764-1009
   myUserName          S-1-5-21-615456588-3658538152-758053764-1008
   

3. Open the Registry Editor (press ⊞ Win + R and execute regedit), go to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\<UserSID>, double-click on the ProfileImagePath and change the user folder name:
   
4. Open the folder C:\users\ in a File Explorer and rename the user folder there as well.

That is it! Now you can log in using your user account and you should see your user profile folder has been renamed.

Cool Tip: How to determine whether the current user is a Domain User account or a Local User account! Read more →