A reliable way to get your Windows display name

Question

I need to get the display name of the current user and cannot find a solution that always works. Just for clarity, I'm not looking for a username. I need John Dow. The value displayed in the Start menu.

There are many posts about this issue, however no one has solved my problem.

Get Windows username

How to get the display name AD of the current user during login

These two posts lead me to:

PrincipalContext context = domain.Equals(Environment.MachineName, StringComparison.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase) ? new PrincipalContext(ContextType.Machine) : new PrincipalContext(ContextType.Domain, domain); UserPrincipal userPrincipal = new UserPrincipal(context) { SamAccountName = username }; PrincipalSearcher searcher = new PrincipalSearcher(userPrincipal); userPrincipal = searcher.FindOne() as UserPrincipal; string displayName = userPrincipal.DisplayName; 

And this code works for the most part. However, if the user has disabled / stopped the server service on his computer, I get an exception: "Server service is not running."

 System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement.UserPrincipal.Current.DisplayName 

The same mistakes.

How to get the full username at login?

 StringBuilder name = new StringBuilder(1024); uint userNameSize = (uint)name.Capacity; const int NameDisplay = 3; GetUserNameEx(NameDisplay, name, ref userNameSize) 

Returns an error, but an empty string if the user is not in the domain.

How do you read the username (first and last) on all versions of Windows?

 // get SAM compatible name <server/machine>\\<username> if (0 != GetUserNameEx(2, username, ref userNameSize)) { IntPtr bufPtr; try { string domain = Regex.Replace(username.ToString(), @"(.+)\\.+", @"$1"); DirectoryContext context = new DirectoryContext(DirectoryContextType.Domain, domain); DomainController dc = DomainController.FindOne(context); if (0 == NetUserGetInfo(dc.IPAddress, Regex.Replace(username.ToString(), @".+\\(.+)", "$1"), 10, out bufPtr)) { var userInfo = (USER_INFO_10) Marshal.PtrToStructure(bufPtr, typeof (USER_INFO_10)); return Regex.Replace(userInfo.usri10_full_name, @"(\S+), (\S+)", "$2 $1"); } } finally { NetApiBufferFree(out bufPtr); } } 

With the above, I get an ActiveDirectoryObjectNotFoundException with the message "Domain controller not found in the domain .." when I call DomainController.FindOne.

I did not find the registry setting for the display name.

I do not know what else to try. Please help.

Answer 1

All the methods described above will work only if you are in a domain. If you do not, you must rely on a local repository of user accounts. The following information on how to get this information: How to get a list of Local Windows users (Only users who appear on the Windows login screen) . However, in a domain situation, the user account will not be in local storage.

If you are in a domain but not connected to a domain controller, the display name will not be available to you. This information is stored on the domain controller, and not on the user's local computer. If your users are in a domain, they really should not disable the server service (use GPOs). In addition, they lose much more than the ability to restore their user account by disabling this service.

I want to check for a domain before trying to get a display name. In the event of a failure, an error message is displayed. There are potentially too many cross cases to make them work on all of them. Go with the script that you intend to use in the program and give an error message for the rest.