Recipe 2.16. Getting the User s Name

Recipe 2.16. Getting the User's Name

Problem

You need to obtain the name of the current Windows user.

Solution

Use the My.User.Name property to get the domain and login ID of the current user.

Discussion

The My.User.Name property returns a string containing the current user ID and related domain name in the format "domain/user." If the user is part of a workgroup instead of a domain, the domain portion may be replaced by the local machine name. Applications written using ASP.NET do not have access to the same type of user information as desktop applications because Web Forms programs run in the context of a special web-application user.

If your application uses an authentication system other than the default Windows security scheme, My.User.Name may return information about the current user in a different format.

If you don't like the merged "domain/user" format, you can get the individual components from other areas within the .NET object hierarchy. These three properties will probably get you what you need:

System.Environment.MachineName
System.Environment.UserDomainName
System.Environment.UserName

If you are interested in identifying the registered owner of the local workstation, you can find that information in the system portion of the registry. The key is:

 \\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion

The RegisteredOrganization and RegisteredOwner values within that key supply the values that you often see when installing new software on your system.