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In Linux when I want to share user data and credentials, I only need to ensure that the same user shares the same POSIX UID and GID (typically starting from 1000) across two Linux installations on the same machine.

Now I would like to do this in Windows 10. Because Windows enforces a new user creation in its OOBE procedure and that Windows uses a very long UID format (e.g. S-1-5-21-1234567890-1234567890-1234567890-1001, it is non-trivial to simply "duplicate" the UID from the old Windows installation, as there are much more to change along, for example the NTFS ACL on %UserProfile%, as well as HKCU in registry.

How should I achieve this?

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  • Same user name on different machines / installations have different UID numbers for security and I do not think you can alter that.
    – anon
    Commented Oct 26, 2019 at 12:28
  • @John How about re-creating a user with the same UID / system profile?
    – iBug
    Commented Oct 26, 2019 at 12:50
  • That does not work either. Each new user (even with the same name) gets a new UID
    – anon
    Commented Oct 26, 2019 at 12:54

1 Answer 1

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Under Windows this UID is rather called the Security IDentifier (SID). Each Windows computer on the network has a unique machine SID.

From the computer SID are generated account SIDs for all accounts by appending an ascending number to the computer SID.

To change an account SID would then require also changing the machine SID and that of all the other accounts, user or inbuilt, as well as all permissions and countless others. It is unlikely that anyone here could give the entire list of places where that needs to be done to be effective.

For that reason, Mark Russinovich has decided in 2009 to retire his utility NewSID, which was until then the only one in existence that tried to do reset machine SID.

Final answer: What you are asking is impossible to do.

You may read more about the subject in the following articles:

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