Windows – Account folder moved to “Administrator.000”

administratoruser-accountswindows 10

Before the Anniversary Update (which I only installed recently), Win 10 Pro 64 had one main account (mine) :

  • Its name was Administrator (it was the built-in admin account)
  • Its full name was different (lets say it was "Full_Name")
  • This account had (obviously) Admin rights
  • Its Win 10 User folder was "C:\Users\Administrator"

And I was very happy with this.

Since applying the Anniversary update a few days ago, Win 10 has changed my User folder to "C:\Users\Administrator.000" and created a new/different "C:\Users\Administrator". I didn't noticed anything special at first since everything appeared fine (desktop icons etc appeared like normal, everything had been silently moved and set up). Privileges are still fine, etc.

But browsing through the Users folder I noticed this change. It's not a big deal in and of itself but for the sake of cleanliness I would like to return the situation to normal, ie :

  • have my user account be the built-in Admin account again ; and thus also…
  • having my User folder be "C:\Users\Administrator" once again (with everything moved back and correctly detected/set in there) and not have this "Administrator.000" be my user account folder anymore

How can I proceed ?

Best Answer

I had this problem as well. For me, in my original C:\Users\Username folder one folder remaining in it, Index. When opening this folder in Explorer I was presented with the well-known dialog asking me to grant permission to this folder. I reverted to the previous Windows 10 version, 1709, and then I moved the search index to a different directory, removing C:\Users\Username\Index. I tried the update to 1803 again and now my user directory was not renamed to C:\Users\Username.000.

I suggest that you check if the deepest subfolders of the folders that remain in your original user folder are accessible. If not, you may have the same problem that I had. Revert to the previous version, fix the access problems, and try the update again.

When reverting to a previous Windows version, I advise you to make a USB recovery drive because for me reverting lead to a broken Windows installation once.

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