WindowsXP folder renaming

Factual Questions
1

I have two PC’s that are networked. Both are running WinXP personal edition.

In one I have the following path:
C:\Document and Settings\Owner.Black

In the above case, the PC name is Black and that is where all of my files are located. They are actually in
C:\Document and Settings\Owner.Black\My Documents

My other PC doesn’t have that structure, which I would like. I would like to have the following structure in my old PC

C:\Document and Settings\Owner.Tan

instead of it current one of

C:\Document and Settings\Old PC

However, WinXP tells me that I am not allowed to rename the ‘Old PC’ folder to ‘Owner.Tan’ because it is a system folder.

How can I rename this folder without messing anything up?

Thanks,

Ivan

2

There are some limitiations to XP Home when compared to XP Pro, and I think this is one of them.

First - you cannot directly change the name of the folder because Windows has associated the folder structure with a user name. There are certain files that are in use by the system. Because of the way certain files are used, you cannot simply copy the folders to a new folder structure & have it work.

Under the NT/2K/XP Pro line of Windows, there is a feature that allows you to copy a profile. However, after poking around the MS site for 30 minutes, my conlcusion is that it won’t work under XP, as the networking features required are disabled. However, since I use XP Pro & can’t verify, I may be wrong.

So, in case you can do it:

KB article #1 - This one explains why the folder structure may not match the user name. It also points out that the real user name, which controls the folder structure, cannot be changed in XP Home.

Now, on the off chance that you can actually copy a profile under XP home, here is KB Article #2 which explains how to do what you are after in XP Pro. The basic idea would be to create a user with the name you want, and then copy the old profile.

Again, I am not certain you can do this in XP Home. Frankly, I don’t think its really worth the trouble.

3

Yeah, I looked at your links and I don’t think it’s possible. Thanks for your help anyways.