Windows 10: Temporary Profile that Windows isn't recognising as one + inability to get to local account...

70% of my problem has been that my issue has been too specific for other help posts to apply to, so I'm going to be as annoyingly specific as I can with this one, which also means it's very long, so sorry about that. My laptop is running on Windows 10.


What caused it: I think what this was caused by was a sequence that started with Windows making a force shutdown due to an error that had a reference that I don't remember all of but included "UNEXPECTED_STORE" and that I have experienced on this laptop multiple times in the past without issue. When my laptop restarted automatically and I tried to log in, the process was taking long enough that I tried to force shutdown; instead of doing that it stuttered for a bit before giving me a new login page, at which point I turned the laptop off. When I turned it back on and logged in again, I was in what appeared to be a temporary profile - namely, my screensaver, my files, and some software installed including Spotify and the LINE desktop app were gone.


What made this more of an issue: A few weeks ago I was hit with that Windows 10 update that would put some people into a temporary profile loop, and that loop happened to me upon my laptop restarting. This article was what I used to resolve this, but the plaintext version of what I did was retrieve my SID via Command Prompt for reference, open Registry Editor in order to navigate to registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\<SID>, point the ProfileImagePath registry string that corresponds to my accounts SID to C:\Users\FRANK (C: being the correct root and FRANK being the correct profile name), and delete the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\<SID>.bak registry key. My profile was back to normal and accessible after restarting my laptop, and I had not noticed any issues caused or potentially caused by taking these steps.


The reason I think this made this more of an issue is because this prevented Windows from recognising this profile as a temporary profile, as shown by the fact that the notice appearing on the Sync your settings page was different than it had been previously, which also meant that there was no .bak registry key to delete, in my head meaning none of my previous fix would work.


Things that have happened since then: a Curry's KnowHow worker prompted me to connect my Microsoft account and did not seem to believe that I could have not created one upon setup to attach to this laptop or the account on it. The password reset dialogue told me that I would be sent a code "if your email address is a match", and I did receive the code, so I just assumed that I had maybe linked my Gmail to the local account and had forgotten about it. I set the password, restarted, came to a screen that prompted me to log in to a profile called "Frank H" (name attached to my Gmail account) rather than "FRANK" which it had previously been, and found a profile that appeared the same.


Going home from Curry's is when I registered that the purpose of deleting the .bak registry key in the initial temporary profile loop situation was for it to be gone rather than for it to specifically go through the act of being deleted; it not being there from the previous temporary profile loop troubleshooting didn't make a difference because the point was for it to not be there and I could still carry out the rest of the steps, which was not something my up-at-5am-in-the-middle-of-an-all-nighter brain realised. When I got home, I set out to do this - a reminder that I'm on the new 'Frank H' profile attached to my Gmail rather than the local 'FRANK' file that I actually need to do this on in the first place, and also that I'm running on fumes - find that the .bak registry file is there, and do not think before pointing the ProfileImagePath registry string towards C:\Users\FRANK and deleting said .bak file.


Where I am now: I'm currently on the new 'Frank H' profile attached to my Gmail account, which is a temporary profile with no .bak registry string and with the ProfileImagePath registry string pointing towards C:\Users\FRANK, and is also listed as the administrator. The 'Sign in with local account' link under the account information in Settings seems to prompt me to create a local account rather than sign in with the (hopefully still) existing one on the laptop. To me the logical starting point seems to be finding a way to access the original local 'FRANK' profile and then (if still needed) to carry out my amended plan for temporary profile troubleshooting featuring pointing that accounts' ProfileImagePath registry string to C:\Users\FRANK, so unless anyone has a vastly different angle from which to offer a solution, accessing the original local account that should still be on the system at large is my step one. I have not manually created any reboot points, so if I revert to last known working version I don't know where I'll end up and might end up no better off with no way to rectify it, so this is not the solution I'm looking for until I need a true last-ditch attempt.


I really wish I could tl;dr this but I don't really know how to cut down to do so, so the paragraph above is the closest thing I can offer to one, and to anyone who reads through all of this I truly thank you because man was this long.

:)

 

Windows 10 temporary profile error?

Hi,

Thank you for posting your query on Microsoft Community.

As per the issue description you are facing issue in editing some settings from a temporary profile. You need to login to your original (Administrator) profile to change those settings.

I would suggest you to change the account type to administrator, if it is not and see if it helps. Try the steps provided below to change the account type.

• Login with the temporary profile.
• Press Windows key + X.
• Select Control Panel from the list.
• Select Large icons from the view by drop down menu.
• Click on User Accounts.
• Click on Change Account type.
• Select Administrator radio button and click OK.

Hope this would help. If issue still persists post back with current status of your computer and result of the proposed suggestion, we will be happy to assist you.

Regards,

 

Try to login into my profile but am redirected to temporary profile.

In simple terms and step by step how to have my profile not be redirected to a temporary profile. Answers I have seen are too technical. Cannot figure out where to start on my computer to create a new user account as posts suggest. This started the
day I updated to Windows 10.

 

PC switched me to a temporary user profile


It'll be the same tutorial below, but do the steps while signed in to your built-in Administrator account.

You've been signed in with a temporary profile - Fix