How can I modify the My Computer text to show logged on username and machine name?

A. It may be useful to have the My Computer icon to show the current logged on user and computer name and this can be configured as follows:

1. Start the registry editor (regedt32.exe)
2. Move to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\\{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D\}
3. Select the <No Name> value and Delete
4. From the Edit menu select 'Add Value'
5. Leave the value name blank and set the type to REG_EXPAND_SZ
6. Click OK and enter the text
   User: %USERNAME% on: %COMPUTERNAME%
7. Click OK
8. Click on the desktop and press F5 (for refresh) and the change takes effect

Without changing the value type to REG_EXPAND_SZ the %username% and %computername% does not get expanded to the actual user name and computer name. This works for Windows NT 4.0, for Windows 2000 perform the following:

1. Start the registry editor (regedt32.exe)
2. Move to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\\{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D\}
3. Double-click the value LocalizedString to edit and cut'n'paste the contents to somewhere safe. It will be something like:
   @D:\WINNT\system32\shell32.dll,-9216@1033,My Computer
4. Use Registry/Save Subkey to save the current entry.
5. Delete the value LocalizedString.
6. Create a new value named LocalizedString of type REG_EXPAND_SZ and paste in the content saved at step 3). Edit the text 'My Computer' at the end of the string and change it to '%USERNAME% on %COMPUTERNAME%', for example to:
   @D:\WINNT\system32\shell32.dll,-9216@1033,%username% on %computername%
7. Right-click on the desktop and choose Refresh, if you have desktop icons shifted to the taskbar, right-click on the desktop section and choose Refresh.

Last updated 11 September 1999

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