Personalize Your Start Menu

My Compaq Presario came with Windows XP pre-loaded. That was very convenient in many ways, but one small disadvantage was that my name had been entered as Compaq_Owner and the picture at the top of my Start menu had been pre-specified as one of the stock images (in this case, chess pieces)! If I had installed Windows XP myself, I would have entered my name and specified an image during the installation process. If your copy of Windows also came pre-loaded, here’s how to make those simple changes:

the top left corner of my old Start menu

You would think that the Start menu name and image could be changed by opening the Start menu, right-clicking next to Compaq_Owner at the top, and clicking on “Properties” — but that isn’t how you do it. Clicking on “Properties” allows you to customize many aspects of the Start menu, such as its visual style or what system components appear there, but the name and image have to be changed somewhere else. Here’s what I did:

• I opened the Start menu and clicked on Control Panel.
• I scrolled to the bottom of the Control Panel and clicked on User Accounts.
• In the bottom half of the User Accounts window, under the heading “or pick an account to change,” I clicked on Compaq_Owner and was presented with a list of options.
• I clicked on Change my name to change the name to Mark, and then I clicked on Change my picture to change the image to the picture of a sunset.

the top left corner of my new Start menu

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