Windows 10: User Account Name Change

"will I have to reinstall apps (Dragon, Office, etc.) and redo customizations (color themes, Windows settings, etc.)?"

Definitely not, the choice is yours. The in-place Upgrade basically resets Windows files and base settings, so anything missing or corrupted, is replaced, as if freshly installed.
I like to use Step 4 (download MCT and make an ISO that you place on desktop and run). If you have any trepidation, watch the excellent video by 'essenbe' in the tutorial and start at 3:24 mark to see the entire process using an ISO. It will make you more comfortable doing this rather than spend hours debugging.

"I'm wondering if the Spring Creator's Update will fix this."

Indeterminate. You'll get a new OS at that point. If any old hardware or programs are incompatible, they'll need workarounds

 

I'll try to tackle this tonight as the troubleshooting is getting too time consuming...

One final question. My laptop (Dell Precision) has Windows 10 Pro on it. I upgraded to the Pro for Workstations version since I have a Xeon processor.

Is there a special edition that I need to download, or will a standard 64-bit version work? I seem to recall reading that the software was the same (Pro vs Home) and it's only what was unlocked feature wise that made the difference.

Thank you tremendously for all your help!

 

Using the Media Creation Tool will upgrade the laptop using the version on the laptop. It sees what type of Windows you have and will use the one on your laptop if you are running the upgrade from within Windows.

 

Sweet. Hopefully things go smoothly tonight. I'm going to make some snapshots of ways I had things arranged, shortcut links (e.g., Chrome tabs open with separate profiles; send to link to send to my work; etc.). Too bad Spring Creator's update wasn't out yet. I would go with it.

 

Workstation is only useful if you have more than 2 processors - not cores. If you have one processor it will not help you unless you want the other features.

In any case, you use a Pro ISO to upgrade/repair install Pro-Ws. Indeed if you want to clean install you clean install Pro and then upgrade it (for free as it will recognize your existing license) through the store.

 

Man, I wish I had done that a long time ago! The repair install with in-place upgrade worked like a charm! Sound card is showing up and functioning properly now. Didn't lose a single program. I haven't been able to test Dragon yet as I don't have my microphone hooked up. Hopefully that and my dock work ok, but the way things are going right I believe they will.

I spend hours trying to correct everything (and making it worse). The inplace upgrade worked like a charm in <1 hour.

Thank you to all for your help! I'm normally a Macintosh guy, but I have to use Windows for work. A long time ago, I built my own Windows PC's. Windows 10 is definitely a big improvement over other Windows and I often find myself using my work laptop to do personal stuff because Windows 10 is so good.

 

"The repair install with in-place upgrade worked like a charm! Sound card is showing up and functioning properly now. Didn't lose a single program."

Great News, Congratulations ! Now that you 'experienced', when Springs Creators finally comes out, the process to manually Upgrade is exactly the same; download the updated MCT, create the ISO, mount and run setup.

I like to do it this way vs than letting WU do it in the background on it's timetable and not yours. I also like to keep the basic version ISO on hand, at all times, for instances like this, where it's faster and more complete to get a fresh start vs trying to debug and test solutions for hours.

 

Now back to square one... again getting the red X in my speaker in the tray and when you hover over it, a popup says "The Audio Service is not running."

Is this a bug with the 1709 update?

 

I've created a new thread since this is more a driver/service issue now instead of username.

See: Speaker Driver and Audio Service Weirdness - Windows 10 Forums

 

Renaming never works. Sure you can rename the folder in C:\Users\whatever

What will always be a problem is the original name will still be stored. Not only in the registry but also in various files in %appdata%. Even MS applications (like OneDrive) will store the paths explicitly naming the user.

You could (and I have) scan the contents of every file in %appdata% and rename them but it is still just a cludge.

Best is to make a new user than try to second guess Microsoft.

I'm surprised @Brink made a tutorial for this as it obviously doesn't work.

 

Renaming the user profile folder usually works just fine. You may have some issues with older programs that do not reference the user profile folder correctly though.

*Arrow Change Name of User Profile Folder in Windows 10 Windows 10 Tutorials

Of course, the above doesn't change the name of the user account.

*Arrow Change User Name of Account in Windows 10 Windows 10 Tutorials

I agree, it is best to create and use a new user account on the PC instead though.

 

Yup *Smile