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I'm unable to create an account named 'con' in Windows 7. I can create the account but each time I login, I see a notification that I'm working under a temporary profile and my files are wiped off after logging off. Any Advice/Suggestions on How to Fix?

This post gave me a hint but is not focused on user accounts but files and folders.

Community
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Sharad Gautam
  • 534

4 Answers4

18

CON is a reserved word for Windows as it's the name of a device (console). Use something else.

Karan
  • 57,289
15

Here's the answer to my own question. 'con' is a reserved keyword under Windows. So, when I try to create an account named con, the respective document directories fail to be created and hence when I login, all my data is stored in temp, which is wiped on logging out.

To fix this, I deleted the current account named 'con' and created an account named 'con0'. This successfully made an account named con0 with its respective document directories as con0. Then I changed the Account Name to 'con' which made windows to associate the 'con0' user folder to con User Account.

jamesdlin
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Sharad Gautam
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5

When you create a user, Windows also creates a home folder for that user. Traditionally that home folder is named same as the user. So the process of creating the CON user expected to fail when creating their home folder because that name is not allowed in the file system.

Also note, that Windows' filesystem is case insensitive, so "con" and "Con" have the same issue.

I am not sure if you can create another user name and then rename the user, because there are potentially other places that will conflict with the name. The general advice is to stay away from the reserved words - the benefit is most likely not worth the fight.

bishop
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Vlad Didenko
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0

This has been answered, but yes it is a reserved device. When people were weaning themselves off CP/M and picking up DOS, most manuals described creating a file in this way... (close to the front, too).

copy con file.txt
...
...
^Z

(Some people are still doing this, it is like a VMS CREATE).

So that this will work, CON is reserved.

Others are COM1 COM2 COM3 COM4 PRN AUX LPT1

There are numerous KB articles and TechNet information pages concerning this, so it is odd that the question would come here.

mckenzm
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