Changing the Owner Registry Tattoo

 By Lee Brannon

 Revised and rewritten - Posted 1/31/09

 If you are anything like me you have probably bought used computers or "Brannonsteined" one from parts. I am constantly taking old PIII and P4 machines and making them useful again. I keep a box of "still good" parts and when someone buys a new machine because the old one died I ask for the old machine. As I write this I am using a Gateway that has it’s owner set to the computer model number.

One problem you will encounter is that perfectly good Windows installs will often have something strange in the Owner entry. This gets in the way on occasion when registering software and sometimes the owner name displayed is a real embarrassment./o:p>

You can check your owner name by going to the Start Menu and right clicking on “My Computer”.  Selecting Properties will display the computers properties window and the General tab will contain an Owner name or a Registered to: field.

In this case my computer is registered to itself “Gateway6100”. This is a fairly easy fix provided that you are not afraid to make a registry edit.

Warning: For those of you who are non-technical you should be warned that mistakes in the registry edit can cause the system to fail or worse. Any changes you make are "Made". There is no Save option and no Undo nor is there an "Exit without saving"  DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS if you are unfamiliar with the registry or the registry tool.

Step 1) Go to the Start Menu and select Run... from the menu.

Step 2) Enter REGEDIT into the Text Box and click the OK button.

Step 3) In the Registry editorStep 3) In the Registry editor find the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion

 (Click the plus sign "+" next to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, then Click the plus sign "+" next to SOFTWARE, then Click the plus sign "+" next to Microsoft, then Click the plus sign "+" next to Windows NT. Now click CurrentVersion)

Step 4) On the right side you will see Registered Organization and Registered owner. Double-click the one you want to change.

Step 5) Enter the name you want into the Value data: box and click OK.

That's really all there is to it. Just Close REGEDIT and your done. The change that you made may not appear until after a reboot of the system.

Notice that the Registered to: field now contains my name.