Modifying environment variables for a logged in user is straight forward. However there are some instances when we need to modify environment variables for a different user. One frequent usage which I have come across is when we need to modify PATH variables for a service account in a CI box. Service account may not have local logon rights to the machine Or we may not know its password. Hence I always end up using below method to update path variables

Identify Security Identifier(SID)

Open command prompt and use below commands

Replace USERNAME with actual username

wmic useraccount where name="USERNAME" get sid

We can also find username based on SID Replace SIDNUMBER with actual value

wmic useraccount where sid="SIDNUMBER" get name

Once we have the SID number of the next user, move on to next step

Modify Registry

  • Open registry editore (Regedit.exe) in windows.
  • Navigate to HKEY_USERS » SID of USER» ENVIRONMENT
  • This should display all defined environment variables. We can modify all variables as we need