How can I change the user name in Windows

[DaveGoTech]

Hello: I recently bought a used PC with Windows 98 (SE) installed. I uninstalled all the existing applications and deleted the user files and have just Windows with it's drivers installed. Now I want to install my software. The original user Name and Company are entered into Windows and shows up in Control Panel and anytime I install new software. I did a FIND in "\Windows" and see numerous files with this text string in it. The ones I suspect are hwinfo.dat, user.dat and system.dat, which are hidden, but I guess I can boot with a floppy, temporarily change the attribute and edit the file to change the user info. Is this the way to do it and it is safe? I have the Windows CD for the machine, but not the driver disks, so I don't want to erase the PC.

 

[cdogg]

First of all, the user.dat and system.dat files make up your registry. There is no need to edit them in a text editor. With Windows running, go to Start->Run, type regedit, and hit OK.

*Note: Be extremely careful when making changes. It's always a good idea to make a backup of these two files before continuing.

The key you should be looking for is:
HKEY_Local_Machine\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion
RegisteredOwner = "your name"
RegisteredOrganization = "your company name"

 

[TopHat2]

If you don’t feel comfortable editing the registry there is a little VBScript that will do it for you, got to:

http://www.billsway.com/vbspage/

Look for “Change Registered Owner and/or Organization” on the home page, download the zip extract it and double click on the “ChgOwnOrg.vbs”, it will prompt you for a new user name and organisation name.

The “Windows 9x ProductKey Saver” is another handy thing from this site, it finds the Windows product key in your registry.

For those who are interested -if Windows won’t start- you can also get the key out of the registry from the DOS prompt, for Win98/ME by:
C:\Windows\Command\Find /I "ProductKey" C:\Windows\System.dat | More
Or for Win95 by:
C:\Windows\Command\Find /I "ProductId" c:\windows\system.dat | More