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I have a Window 7 computer that is a part of a small office work group. The user wanted to change their login name, so I made this change via Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Local Users and Groups by right clicking on the account and selecting the "rename" option. I had a suspicion that I would likely have to manually change the user's home folder, but instead it seems to have completely borked the entire system. The worst thing is that the Administrative account seems to be completely frozen by the change. Attempting to access any administrative type utilities seems to freeze the system. Indeed, the entire start menu appears to freeze up when I log in as the administrator. Trying to open the restore point utility doesn't work either (even in safe mode). I have no idea where to even begin trying to fix this. Any suggestions?
Mark Gemmill
Posted 2013-02-04T19:54:45.673
Reputation: 111
Have you tried changing it back? I'm not suggesting this as a permanent solution (not yet anyway) of course, but I'm just curious to know if the problems are reversible. – MDMoore313 – 2013-02-04T21:06:33.803
I did manage to reverse the account name back to the original but it didn't change any of the problems I was seeing. Actually MS Office was not starting up at all - claiming it couldn't find the account registration. I ended up unplugging the computer and taking it back to the office anticipating that I'd have to do a reinstall, but all these problems have just disappeared when it booted it up. Perhaps the issue originated with the peer-to-peer network/workgroup and/or the file sharing? Or maybe it just needed some fresh air and a drive around the block? :-) – Mark Gemmill – 2013-02-04T22:18:57.780
A little fresh air never hurt a desktop! My next question was if it was possible that since this is a workgroup, another machine in the workgroup had the same user name? It's true that the user SIDs should be different, but it can't hurt to rule that out. – MDMoore313 – 2013-02-05T14:14:52.760
1All the user and computer names are different. I suspected that the user name (Office1) I changed things to might have been a problem, but really I'm just guessing. Bottom line, whatever the problem might have been, the computer needed a clean break from the network to "correct" itself. Everything is back to normal and I switched user accounts by creating an new account and then doing an "Easy Transfer" of the data. Which is probably what I should have done to start with. :-) Thanks for the help MDM. – Mark Gemmill – 2013-02-06T01:11:34.053
Yes, Easy transfer was a great addition to Windows (not sure if was in Vista, but at least a great addition to 7). Glad to hear it's working. – MDMoore313 – 2013-02-06T12:21:57.117