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I would like to know if its possible to have two Windows 10 user accounts share the same profile folder? My workstation has currently only one user account (Admin) and i would like to create another user account just for RDC. I would like the latter to have access to the same settings, applications and folders as my main account. The first idea that came up was the possibility to use the same account folder for both accounts.

Is this possible? If so, how can i accomplish it? If not, other suggestions will be very much appreciated.

Ricky
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2 Answers2

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Each user has to have its own folder. A viable alternative might be:

  1. set up an account the way you like it.
  2. have the data folders you want to be consistent across users point to a location outside the user directory (so documents points to, say, C:\Docs instead of C:\Users\username\documents)
  3. create a new user account. then, while logged in to a third administrator account, copy your old account's files over to the new account. This ought to create a perfect clone of the old account.
  4. You may need to set user permissions as appropriate for both accounts so they both know they are allowed to use the shared data folders.

I would recommend a folder synching app rather than just copying in the finder. That way you can see that everything has copied properly and is identical between the old and new user accounts.

Glaurung
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This is possible. First, create user account as usual, using Control Panel or lusrmgr.msc.

  1. Reboot PC and login into your newly created account. Your new account will be assigned profile folder, located at C:\Users\xxx (let's assume "xxx" is the name of new account).
  2. Now open regedit.exe and navigate to path "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList". You'll see the list of all users on a PC.
  3. Alternately click on profiles, whose name starts with S-1-5-21 until you find profile with "ProfileImagePath" equal to C:\Users\xxx.
  4. In this profile change value of "ProfileImagePath" from "C:\Users\xxx" to the path of your old profile, for example to "C:\Users\Administrator".
  5. Reboot PC and you'll discover that user xxx has new profile folder. To confirm it, open CMD and enter %USERPROFILE%. The output would be: 'C:\Users\Administrator' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.

Personally, I have two user accounts, which share same profile folder. One account is Administrator, another one is SYSTEM (S-1-5-18).

Rohit Gupta
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Zagavarr
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