• Why has my profile got a ‘.computername’ suffix? (XP anything)

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    #391382

    Suppose I have a new XP userid / profile called Gladys, and that my computer name is, very originally, COMPUTERNAME.

    I have found that under “Documents and Settings” I now have two folders
    Gladys
    and
    Gladys.COMPUTERNAME

    I’m quite familiar with this when an XP box logs on to a domain (but never really thought much about it), and multiple users log on to it (no fast user switching there!!), but I don’t know what this has happened on my home box.

    Has anyone any ideas?

    When I log on as Gladys, it “seems” to be using the folder “Gladys.COMPUTERNAME”…

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    • #699036

      Mine’s similar. I created my settings offline using my network logon name. When I logged on, it created a new identity in the form username.domain, which led me to cry out in pain “don’t tell me I have to spend another hour configuring Windows.” IT saved me by cloning from the first to the second, how I don’t remember. I’m not sure whether this is fixable, for now I’m just leaving it as it is. But I digress… could you have done the opposite of me? Gladys for the network identity and Gladys.computername for the “offline” identity?

      • #699143

        Jefferson

        I think these got created at the time I XXCOPYed all the stuff under Documents and Settings from a corrupted user/profile to Gladys. But I can’t explain why it happened, and I don’t know of any way out of it, because renaming users/profiles causes all sorts of naming problems with the Documents and Settings folder names — as I found out a bit earlier…

    • #699267
      • #699388

        SMBP

        Leaving aside your “Gladys the Cow” post (clearly not a determrmined or dedicated animal!), my point was really one of surprise that the profiles/”My Documents” directories had ended up with a dotComputername suffix, when my computer is standalone (apart from the internet/email connection, of course). I’ll read through all your suggested links to see if anything makes sense! Thanks, as usual!

        • #699404

          John–

          It’s amazing how many animals the UK sites have doing all kinds of things, (Gladys the Cow of course hadn’t established her computername profile yet), but very seriously I wanted to be selective and effective with the links/KB’s I threw up there, but I found the vocabularly tough going–identities/profiles probably aren’t but are somewhat for me. It seems easy to change them, or to use tweakers to change them, but I understand what you’re getting at may not be as easy as a simple name change tweaker that hits the registry. Just makes me want to get a better grip on this. And maybe I’m overly confused by this area, but it seems Microsoft makes it confusing or could make it more clear take your choice. Please let me know what you’re able to get done.

          SMBP

      • #699444

        SMBP

        I think Note 3: If you create a new account, you must logon once before you copy another account over top of it. Windows creates the user profile at logon, not at account creation, and it will not use the copy you created before that first logon, it will create a user.COMPUTERNAME folder instead. exactly matches what probably happened. But Kelly doesn’t say how to get round the problem, does s/he?!!

        • #699556

          John–I don’t know about Kelly’s site, but later on I’ll try searching again and hopefully some people more familiar with this will be able to clarify it some–I’m just as interested in sorting this out, because the wording in those those KB’s is hard for me to sort out because of the similarity of some of the terms to me–profiles, domain names, and the paths.

          This is Kelly Theriot whose site is an excellent resource and takes a while to drill. I’m positive that the PC and hardware listed in the link have changed by now.

          SMBP

          • #699560

            “Gray, Louisiana”? Seems I get around a lot!

            It looks to me that I will have to delete both Gladys profiles, the one with .Computername, and the one without, then recreate and log in FIRST, before copying data from the opriginal, unhappy, profile / userid.

            I’m only talking “local” profiles here, not “roaming” or “mandatory”. I’ve mostly managed to avoid the latter two types, except when trying to figure out why it takes someone a million years (approx) to log on (because their Temporary Internet Files are being downloaded to their local hard drive from their server…).

    • #701217

      I managed to fix a similar problem once by

      Logging in as Administrator
      Deleting the user account for the problem user
      Use Properties of My Computer to get System Properties
      On the Advanced Tab choose User Profiles > Settings
      Select and delete the profile for the problem user
      Create a new user account

      This lost all of the users custom settings, which wasn’t a problem for me but might well be for you.

      StuartR

      • #701309

        Stuart

        That’s almost exactly what I’m going to do, with the additional problems that I want to move all the Office settings and a three-identity Outlook Express from the old user profile to the new one…

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