User directory location

[Loren Pechtel]

Windows nuked itself on me. Even a repair install still had the bug, I had to do a total reinstall. I forgot to deal with the documents and settings directory, though.

Now I have things like All Users.WINDOWS and even Loren.MAIN and Loren.MAIN.000 -- the latter actually is the current directory. I would like to change these back to the basic forms that they should be and nuke the extras that it created. Is there any way to do this short of reinstalling (I don't want to spend another day reinstalling software!)

Don't be afraid to be technical in an answer, I've been programming for almost 30 years now. I just haven't had too much need to delve into the innards of Windows.

[Scarecrow Man]

Short answer: You cant. A reinstall is required. This happens when you install Windows in a folder that already contains a Windows installation.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/269378

Windows 2000 and Windows XP handle duplicate down-level account names as well but in a slightly more intuitive manner. A suffix is placed on the username of the profile that is either the name of the domain, if the user account is a domain account, or the name of the computer, if the user account is a local user account. If, by chance, another user with the same name from the same domain or computer logs onto the machine, Windows 2000 or Windows XP adds a .000 suffix to the domain or computer name. If the action happens again, it then starts incrementing the .000 as well.

This also applies when another user with the same name is created in a differen't installation of Windows.

Your best bet, is to delete these old folders, and rename your folder. You will then have to update this folder name in every instance that it is found such as environment variables, user control panel, etc.

Because it is such a headache, and may cause issues down the road, reinstalling is often much easier.

[Loren Pechtel]

Short answer: You cant. A reinstall is required. This happens when you install Windows in a folder that already contains a Windows installation.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/269378

Windows 2000 and Windows XP handle duplicate down-level account names as well but in a slightly more intuitive manner. A suffix is placed on the username of the profile that is either the name of the domain, if the user account is a domain account, or the name of the computer, if the user account is a local user account. If, by chance, another user with the same name from the same domain or computer logs onto the machine, Windows 2000 or Windows XP adds a .000 suffix to the domain or computer name. If the action happens again, it then starts incrementing the .000 as well.

This also applies when another user with the same name is created in a differen't installation of Windows.

Your best bet, is to delete these old folders, and rename your folder. You will then have to update this folder name in every instance that it is found such as environment variables, user control panel, etc.

Because it is such a headache, and may cause issues down the road, reinstalling is often much easier.

User control panel? I don't see any directory paths you can edit from in there.

Environment variables: Two, TEMP and TMP. This would be easy to fix.

I'm sure there's something in the registry, I could eyeball it or even write something that hunted them all down.

You say "etc"--where else would I look? Don't programs normally ask the OS where that directory is instead of saving it themselves?