Windows 7 starting with a temporary profile
Good day,I have a very disturbing problem with my Windows 7. It will only boot on a temporary profile which is missing several icons and barely something works. I've tried to reboot my computer twice, but it didn't work. I've also searched on this forums for a solution, but I didn't find anything.I hope you can help me to solve that problem.Thank you in advance.
April 11th, 2009 12:45pm

Details Please! Exactly what do you mean by "temporary profile"? Are we talking about a temp user? or are we talking hardware profile or...?When did the problem start? Did you add any hardware? change hardware? install software? Did something crash? Is there an error message of some sort? Throw us a bone, please! This isn't the Psychic Friend's Network. :-)We need more to go on!
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April 11th, 2009 2:09pm

I have not done anything to my system. I didn't install new programms, neither I add hardware or something. I went to bed yesterday, turned my computer off and fell asleep. After a bad dream I woke up and turned my computer on. It told me something like this: My profile could not load properly so a temporary profile was created. All data will be lost after a reboot.Anyway, I tried to solve it myself by copying everything from my old admin profile to a new one. But it didn't work properly. I can use this new profile and everything's fine, but I couldn't backup my old gargabe, such as personal data etc. So I've decided to reinstall my operating system with the newest build. I've heard it works like a charm and everything should be fine with it.Thank you for your help.
April 11th, 2009 2:33pm

I now have the exact same issue. Out of the blue, I logged in only to find out that my profile could not be located and the system has loged in under a " temporary profile".. When going to the users directory, I see my old profile along with a new profile file with the nema "TEMP. (computer name). " I cna not figure out how to re-link my user account with the old profile. I have attempte manual registry profile mods to no avail. Dave B
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May 4th, 2009 12:33am

This has happened to me too, a couple of times. The first time I got the "you have been logged on with a temporary profile", I found no way to correct it, and because I had completely lost my original profile, I did a fresh install of RC1. Since then, I have had one instance of this happening. That time, I restarted the system and it gave me my original profile back.
May 17th, 2009 11:12am

I don't know anything about why a temporary profile is created, but this might help you restore your old profile: Start > Help and support Search for "Profile" (it returns 8 answers) Select "Fix a corrupted user profile"
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May 17th, 2009 11:51am

I have the same problem 1 out of 20 times i logon. It gives me a temporary profile. However a simple reboot always gets the old profile back. I have this problem on 2 different machines running Win7 RC1 (7100).
June 2nd, 2009 6:16pm

What happened to me was that I deleted my own profile just to get a new clean one and all of a sudden Windows 7 complains about Temporary Profile. It didnt matter if i Rebooted or anything. I alway got a Temporary Profile.I solved my problem by going into the registry and delete the effected profile's subfolder under HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileListAfter that all was well again! Best Wishes, Jesper Bernle
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June 2nd, 2009 11:44pm

I have found that you do not even need to reboot. The simple proceedure of logging off the tempoary profile, and logging back on seems to do the trick.
September 23rd, 2009 3:46pm

I have the same issue. I've to pc's running on Windows 7 pro. One PC has two accounts. I often see this happing when one account is logged in and I change account it randomly happens that after logon the temporary account appears. I hope there will soon be a solution for this. thx!
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October 13th, 2009 10:30pm

I tried the following to fix the issue: 1. Simply reboot 2. Rename to profilename.old 3. Deleted the .bak under ProfileID in registry 4. Deleted profile under System Properties NO GO. I cannot create a new one since the profile is built when using the domain account. I can logon as an Admin normally and not under temporary profile. I have had experience that even a local Admin account, it will logon with temp profile. -Dell M44000 -Computer is a member of a Domain -Windows 7 ENT 32-bit
November 17th, 2009 12:13am

What happened to me was that I deleted my own profile just to get a new clean one and all of a sudden Windows 7 complains about Temporary Profile. It didnt matter if i Rebooted or anything. I alway got a Temporary Profile. I solved my problem by going into the registry and delete the effected profile's subfolder under HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList After that all was well again! Best Wishes, Jesper Bernle This is good to fix-it. Thank you very much for the help, after this experience i'm 100% sure i want a MAC. like the ad (mac vs. pc) says ' this time will be diferent. trust me' yeah right
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November 18th, 2009 8:44pm

What happened to me was that I deleted my own profile just to get a new clean one and all of a sudden Windows 7 complains about Temporary Profile. It didn´t matter if i Rebooted or anything. I alway got a Temporary Profile.I solved my problem by going into the registry and delete the effected profile's subfolder under HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileListAfter that all was well again! Best Wishes, Jesper BernleOk well im in the profile list and I see many things. What in the world do I delete??????????? thanks
December 24th, 2009 6:30am

Happy New Year Everyone... I have this same issue with a brand spanking new version of Win 7 Home Premium. I used the wizard to create the massive file to transfer my profiles over. Was wondering if anyone else did that and if perhaps it is causing the issue? I am with mwoolery.... what are you suggesting we delete in the profile? The full folder or a specific key? And will this delete the profile? Or will a new reg key be created when we next log on? Also - I have noticed that this same temp problem occurs when my xbox360 connects to the box. I am using the Windows Media Center extension feature but when I go into Pictures and Videos and attempt to add videos if I go to the "desktop" it shows the path as Temp.0001. And it never remembers anything I add. Any advice would be appreciated. Regards, David
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January 4th, 2010 6:40am

I'm having the same problem on our brand new Dell Netbook with 7 Starter. Ocassionally one user or other will be afflicted with a "temporary profile" on logon.I'm not about to fish around the registry or whatever trying to fix it. A reboot usually does the trick.Very, very disappointing.CyberTrader.com
January 7th, 2010 7:54am

If windows is updating, or if you have applications which are autoupdating, you need to cancel the application thats updating before logging out. If you just log out, or reboot, you're uncleanly unmounting the registry. Look in your system and application logs, and you'll see the message "your registry was not cleanly dismounted" This will corrupt a profile. Deleting the registry key for all affected users fixes it for me everytime. However, one thing to note here, is that the profiles are based on the Default template. So if you login the first time and blow up the registry with the default template, deleting the users key that is affected directly wont solve the problem, you need to delete the key referenced by the default account. I.e. Default User.
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January 18th, 2010 9:38pm

I noticed this happening on an HP Notebook also. My situation happened a little differently though. I log into a domain at work and I have noticed that if I log in as soon as the machine gives me the opportunity to do so it will load the temp profile. If I let it sit after reaching the login screen for a minute or two I log in just fine. But if I log in too quickly it will 100% of the time load this temp profile. So all of you who are having this problem (who dont' currently have any corrupted profiles) try waiting 2 minutes after a boot every time before logging in. I'm fairly certain it won't happen if you give it time to mount and load everything. Try it and post your results on here. This annoyance needs to be fixed in SP1.
February 3rd, 2010 5:23pm

Yep, me too, I have two user accounts on the pc and have the problem on both accounts, one admin, one limited. I am on a clean install of windows 7 premium.DRIVING ME NUTS!
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February 11th, 2010 9:11pm

Same issue. Rebooting works but it's a pain to have to do that each time. Will try waiting a little longer before logging off and back on. Hoping this will be addressed in a SP. Any suggestions other than messing with the registry?
February 15th, 2010 10:16pm

It's Easiest to solve that you think !!!. Yo only have to do these steps:1- Logon with local admin profile. (or other account different that you want to use, but with admin privileges).2- Open regedit and go to HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList. Here you can see all SIDs of loaded profiles and probably you'll have some of them repeated but with .bak extensions.3- So if you want to recover your profile, desktop icons, ect... you only have to delete the profile with no .bak extension and rename the other, deleting only the .bak extension of it:Ex: In Regedit (HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList) I have:SID-1292428093-343818398-2115-158554 (1º Delete this Key)SID-1292428093-343818398-2115-158554.bak (2º Rename This Key to SID-1292428093-343818398-2115-158554).4- Restart your computer or Logoff and Logon with the profile that you want to restore and that's all, your profile will be restored Perfectly.Cojonuda la solución Ehhhh!!!! Marclander
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March 5th, 2010 12:35pm

Unfortunately the solution of Marclander didnt work for me, even with the help of another admin account. Did any of you change the default User folder, e.g to another hdd? This might be a problem source. the soultion that worked for me was creating a new user account and moving the files. that means loosing the email and firefox prefs, but it helped me to work again. why doesnt microsoft store all user related files in one directory like linux and unix does? it is so frustrating... a1ien :)
March 12th, 2010 2:28pm

After a few dozen attempt that failed by deleting the profile, I found a different way to fix it.The fix outlined below is actually for another issue [e.g. windows features on/off is blank, cannot install VS2008 SP1, MS updates are failing]. The profile is back after the registry limit was raised!!!!! 1. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control Key: RegistrySizeLimit Type: REG_DWORD Value: ffffffff 2. Reboot 3. Run sfc /scannow -518
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March 15th, 2010 9:23pm

All the above solutions didn't work for me... In my case i created one admin account and one limited account. Earlier when i was logging into the limited account, it didn't showed any temporary profile. Then i changed the password of the limited account and it started showing to me that this is a temporary profile. Sometimes it shows me its not a temporary account and sometimes it shows its a temporary account. I face a lot of difficulty as everytime it takes time showing preparing your desktop for first time and then i have to different settings in it to do my work... anyone please help.....
April 4th, 2010 9:30am

Nice one mate, This worked a treat for me. It seemed that the users profile entry had been renamed to include .bak, I just removed the new TEMP entry that had been created, and then deleted the .bak text at the end of the correct entry.
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April 6th, 2010 1:24am

I'm having a similar issue:New Sony VPCC w Win 7 Proran network ID wizard to join to Domain, no problems or errorsno mention of desired domain user in c:\usersno mention of desired domain user in \HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileListlogging into that PC as any other domain user works finelogging into any other windows7 PC as that user creates the same "Temp Profile" issueI can't find anything different for that user in AD Users & ComputersWhat am I missing?
April 16th, 2010 11:50pm

I have the exact same problem Saimike. The only way I fixed it on my bosses, was to completely delete his network id off the Active Directory servers and then recreate it. That fixed his problem. This is a huge pain in the butt however and I can't help but wonder WTH is going on here! Hello, Microsoft....this is a big deal! Especially since the first time it happened to my boss it wiped out his current profile and ALL his documents etc. He wasn't a happy camper I can tell you. And now the same problem has shown up again when I was trying to set up a brand new laptop for a current user.
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April 19th, 2010 7:52pm

Worked for me, although I had to delete both. Thanks!
April 20th, 2010 6:41pm

if you're having this issue in a domain, look at the user, then check te logon script and profile path lines. That was my issue and it worked for me
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April 21st, 2010 3:13pm

if you're having this issue in a domain, look at the user, then check te logon script and profile path lines. That was my issue and it worked for me Where do I check those?
April 21st, 2010 5:19pm

cause: local registry profile list has bad entries solution: 1) login to the box as an administrator 2) open regedit and navigate to: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList 3) expand ProfileList so that you can see a list of SIDS of loaded user profiles 4) click on each SID in turn and look at the ProfileImagePath value to determine which user profile the SID belongs to 5) add .old to any SIDs (including ones ending with .bak!!! - i.e. .bak becomes .bak.old ) belonging to the user profile that keeps logging in on a TEMP user profile 6) reboot 7) now login as the user and you should log in as that user now
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April 23rd, 2010 6:43pm

I've tried that numerous times. Never works.
April 26th, 2010 10:11pm

Registry fix is the final solution for this issue. I used this method several times in Windows Vista and Windows 7 to fix temp profile issue. It worked great all the time. I explained the steps clearly here. You can check.
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May 11th, 2010 8:34am

The registry fix works for my wifes account (and the guest account) which for the last week or two keep experiencing this issue every day or few days. However WHY does it KEEP happening??? It's driving me nuts as it never affects me (admin) and I've tried completely deleting all the other accounts (including the registry entries) and recreating them but no luck. It's bad as a) the wife can't log on when it happens b) looses her favourites quite often when the registry fix is applied c) have to keep re adding the UK keyboard or it just confuses her too much d) is just really annoying with the computer stopping working etc etc. Anyone got a clue as to what causes the account to get into this crazy state?Starting on the Vista journey 17/09/06
May 13th, 2010 10:54pm

I have found that all the above solutions do not work. I had one user. The ADMIN user. Tried all the deleting and changing of the RegEdit Profile. No luck. One thing about my computer is that at start-up, the screen that reads Windows 7 and then goes to "Preparing Desktop" sits for like 15 minutes. And then the TEMP profile is back. Any help?
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May 15th, 2010 4:40am

Hello, I'm experiencing the same thing; my computer takes a long time to startup, shutdown, and anything is very sluggish; from the mouse to input in the keyboard. Then I also received the Temp User Profile issue. At some point in time, I also received an error message saying the Version of Windows was not valid; which is not true. So I'm really at a standstill, it was working fine and all of a sudden it slowed down tremendously and cannot get into my profile. Any help will be greatly appreciated. Best Regards.
May 23rd, 2010 7:23am

I have seen this issue serveral occasions. This is how i Fixed it for Windows 7 (not sure if it works on Vista) Fix 1. Go to Control Panel > All Control Panel Items > Systems (or right click on “Computer” and then click on Properties. 2. Click on Advanced System Settings from the left side panel. 3. Click Advanced Tab and under User Profiles click Settings 4. Click on the profile you are using and click on Change Type… 5. Select Local Profile > click Ok > Restart and see if that fixes it for you. IT_Troubleshooter Thanks,
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May 24th, 2010 5:44pm

I'm anxious to resolve this problem (BTW it has occured on three separate Dell studio 15 laptops within 5 months) the steps outlined above by IT_Troubleshooter are not available on my version of Windows 7. Any other advice?
May 28th, 2010 6:10pm

this is what fixed my issue - brand new installation of Win7 Ultimate on a new domain with SBS 2008. had a few problems with getting all the GPOs to work properly from the SBS server, and it trashed the reg keys on the local with all the logging on and off and gpupdates. deleted the keys and its all good now once i recreated the user profiles. thanks, -Joseph
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June 6th, 2010 6:38am

I did the same as you did however I was unable to remove the registry keys for some reason. Each log in makes a temp profile with no way to create a new folder or remove the corrupted information. Aggravating that it doesn't work as XP did. Frustrating learning quarks of a new OS.
June 22nd, 2010 8:39pm

I did find a solution for an isntance like what I did. I deleted the profile from the folder c:\Users\Profile instead of deleting through the "Advanced Settings" (correct way) as it always worked in XP to recreate a profile. This applied to a domain account (not sure if its different off a domain) Here's how I fixed it even though I could not delete or rename the registry key. I recreated the folder in the same location with the same name. (just an empty folder) Logged in as the corrupted profile to see if it would make new files in the empty folder. (it did not) I copied all the files from the TEMP directory which was created to the new folder I made in the old spot. (not sure if this step was necessary) I logged back in as an admin account and was able to delete it through what is apparently the "correct" way. (right click computer > properties > advanced system settings > Settings) The profile showed up as Status of "Backup" it was also showing up with a registry key indicated as .bak when I was searching for it in the registry. Strange quark hope this helps someone else.
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June 22nd, 2010 8:57pm

Hey this worked fantastic! I didn't know where Win7 kept the list of profiles. I had deleted a domain profile and it screwed up the user, but once I deleted the key for the user it recreated the profile. Thanks!
June 25th, 2010 7:19pm

I had this problem. I resolved it when i saw the entrees mentioning registry entry in HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList but i deleted the entry for the temp profile, rebooted the system, and was able to log on as my profile. Hope this helps avoid having to recreate user profiles. Windows 7 Enterprise Lenovo ThinkPad T410
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July 9th, 2010 3:10pm

This one worked, 518! Good lord, what a nightmare this was. When are the booger-eating morons at Microsoft going to fix this?
July 15th, 2010 5:48am

I haven't seen the issue happen again for quite a while now. I guess, although I can't tell which one and when, that an update may have solved it. I think I posted another thread about that a few months ago here, I've had the temp profile bug during weeks and weeks. And I agree, that was ____, extremely annoying. I didn't do anything, it just stopped happening. Some kept telling me that my profile in use must have been corrupted and I knew it wasn't. Creating a new one didn't change anything, the issue already happened after a fresh Windows install with a new profile. Anyway, main thing is it's gone now, for good I hope. off topic: Reminds me of another huge bug that was never acknowledged when I reported it. I had no idea where it came from, and found out when the fix was announced in an MS security bulletin. I could always shut down Windows properly except that in the end of the process, the laptop was still powered on, with fans running. That was in fact a bitlocker issue ( only systems running bitlocker were affected), again, only acknowledged once fixed.
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July 15th, 2010 12:07pm

Perfect, Thanks Bernie. Problem solved.
July 21st, 2010 9:59pm

good morning. i'm an IT and have an windows 7 professional 32 bit version that connected to our Domain with it's server 2003 the issue is that my teammate did face a problem since 5 days ago and the problem is that when he login to his PC it's reset his profile to his Domain account we tried too many things changing permissions, restore his profile data, recreate the account from the active directory, create a new account from the active directory & the last thing that we did we even format his PC & we install new fresh copy but it's not good. the bad news is MY ACCOUNT today start to act the same thing like my colleague coz i didn't restart my pc since 6 days ago and today i restart it just today. please help
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July 22nd, 2010 12:16pm

Logged on as admin to a Windows 7 laptop and deleted the TEMP profile. Then I followed Marclander's solution. It worked! Thanks!
July 28th, 2010 6:15pm

Good day, I have a very disturbing problem with my Windows 7. It will only boot on a temporary profile which is missing several icons and barely something works. I've tried to reboot my computer twice, but it didn't work. I've also searched on this forums for a solution, but I didn't find anything. I hope you can help me to solve that problem. Thank you in advance. Today I got the same problem too, not all Desktop shortcuts some of them are disappeard/deleted once temparory profile is created.
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July 31st, 2010 4:10pm

yeah that's normal, this temporary profile, as it's just been created, will display only "all users" shortcuts. Log off and on again, once you're on your regular profile, your own shortcuts will be there.
July 31st, 2010 4:41pm

I have the same problem that my new compaq 311 mini sometimes logs on with a temp profile. Can someone confirm that this is an Windows 7 bug?? Is MS going to fix this with an update?
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July 31st, 2010 5:11pm

have those of you guys, still having this issue, have a fully updated Win7 setup? yeah I'm wondering, 'cause again, I haven't seen this happen for ages.
July 31st, 2010 5:31pm

I have bought it 4 days ago....so I really don't know. When I search for new updates Windows says that there are no new updates available. If my English isn't that good I'm sorry, I'm Dutch.... What can I do?
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July 31st, 2010 5:35pm

Good day, I have a very disturbing problem with my Windows 7. It will only boot on a temporary profile which is missing several icons and barely something works. I've tried to reboot my computer twice, but it didn't work. I've also searched on this forums for a solution, but I didn't find anything. I hope you can help me to solve that problem. Thank you in advance. Definitely this is Microsoft Security Essentials or Internet Explorer. I think some serious bug is there in the Security Essentials or Internet Explorer. Today morning also I got the same screen. This is the second time. Just restarted the system. Now it is fine.
August 6th, 2010 3:37pm

Good day, I have a very disturbing problem with my Windows 7. It will only boot on a temporary profile which is missing several icons and barely something works. I've tried to reboot my computer twice, but it didn't work. I've also searched on this forums for a solution, but I didn't find anything. I hope you can help me to solve that problem. Thank you in advance. Definitely this is Microsoft Security Essentials or Internet Explorer. I think some serious bug is there in the Security Essentials or Internet Explorer. Today morning also I got the same screen. This is the second time. Just restarted the system. Now it is fine. MSE or IE ...alright then, can you elaborate?
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August 6th, 2010 5:30pm

Good day, I have a very disturbing problem with my Windows 7. It will only boot on a temporary profile which is missing several icons and barely something works. I've tried to reboot my computer twice, but it didn't work. I've also searched on this forums for a solution, but I didn't find anything. I hope you can help me to solve that problem. Thank you in advance. Definitely this is Microsoft Security Essentials or Internet Explorer. I think some serious bug is there in the Security Essentials or Internet Explorer. Today morning also I got the same screen. This is the second time. Just restarted the system. Now it is fine. MSE or IE ...alright then, can you elaborate? Sure, (according to my research/observation) I am running MSE every week or two days. It is taking 10 to 15 min to get its job done (default settings) . Once that is done, in the background it is cleaning/removing unnecessary installation files from temp etc., folders by recovering atleast 2GB space each time I ran the MSE.
August 6th, 2010 9:19pm

Good day, I have a very disturbing problem with my Windows 7. It will only boot on a temporary profile which is missing several icons and barely something works. I've tried to reboot my computer twice, but it didn't work. I've also searched on this forums for a solution, but I didn't find anything. I hope you can help me to solve that problem. Thank you in advance. Definitely this is Microsoft Security Essentials or Internet Explorer. I think some serious bug is there in the Security Essentials or Internet Explorer. Today morning also I got the same screen. This is the second time. Just restarted the system. Now it is fine. MSE or IE ...alright then, can you elaborate? Sure, (according to my research/observation) I am running MSE every week or two days. It is taking 10 to 15 min to get its job done (default settings) . Once that is done, in the background it is cleaning/removing unnecessary installation files from temp etc., folders by recovering atleast 2GB space each time I ran the MSE. One more thing my laptop is brand new one purchased two months ago. Software's I installed are Microsoft Visual Studio Express and SQL Server Express. Removed/Uninstalled Mcafee pre-installed and Installed MSE.
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August 6th, 2010 10:05pm

Good day, I have a very disturbing problem with my Windows 7. It will only boot on a temporary profile which is missing several icons and barely something works. I've tried to reboot my computer twice, but it didn't work. I've also searched on this forums for a solution, but I didn't find anything. I hope you can help me to solve that problem. Thank you in advance. Definitely this is Microsoft Security Essentials or Internet Explorer. I think some serious bug is there in the Security Essentials or Internet Explorer. Today morning also I got the same screen. This is the second time. Just restarted the system. Now it is fine. MSE or IE ...alright then, can you elaborate? Sure, (according to my research/observation) I am running MSE every week or two days. It is taking 10 to 15 min to get its job done (default settings) . Once that is done, in the background it is cleaning/removing unnecessary installation files from temp etc., folders by recovering atleast 2GB space each time I ran the MSE. One more thing my laptop is brand new one purchased two months ago. Software's I installed are Microsoft Visual Studio Express and SQL Server Express. Removed/Uninstalled Mcafee pre-installed and Installed MSE. and how do you you relate that to the present topic issue? ...okay, seriously, MSE isn't cleaning anything from the temp folder ;) that's not what it's for. The 2 GB you're recovering each time you've run MSE, if that's the result of MSE's job, would mean that MSE has deleted 2GB of malware..which is still weird. Anyway, the issue with the temporary profile being randomly created at start up has to do with profile corruption, or what is being interpreted as a profile corruption by Windows..wrongly most of the time. That was a bug, somewhere in Windows, not related whatsoever to MSE or IE. I've seen it happen tens of times without even having MSE installed ;) Again, this problem disappeared on my system. I haven't seen the temp profile bug happen for months now.
August 7th, 2010 3:36pm

Good day, I have a very disturbing problem with my Windows 7. It will only boot on a temporary profile which is missing several icons and barely something works. I've tried to reboot my computer twice, but it didn't work. I've also searched on this forums for a solution, but I didn't find anything. I hope you can help me to solve that problem. Thank you in advance. Definitely this is Microsoft Security Essentials or Internet Explorer. I think some serious bug is there in the Security Essentials or Internet Explorer. Today morning also I got the same screen. This is the second time. Just restarted the system. Now it is fine. MSE or IE ...alright then, can you elaborate? Sure, (according to my research/observation) I am running MSE every week or two days. It is taking 10 to 15 min to get its job done (default settings) . Once that is done, in the background it is cleaning/removing unnecessary installation files from temp etc., folders by recovering atleast 2GB space each time I ran the MSE. One more thing my laptop is brand new one purchased two months ago. Software's I installed are Microsoft Visual Studio Express and SQL Server Express. Removed/Uninstalled Mcafee pre-installed and Installed MSE. and how do you you relate that to the present topic issue? ...okay, seriously, MSE isn't cleaning anything from the temp folder ;) that's not what it's for. The 2 GB you're recovering each time you've run MSE, if that's the result of MSE's job, would mean that MSE has deleted 2GB of malware..which is still weird. Anyway, the issue with the temporary profile being randomly created at start up has to do with profile corruption, or what is being interpreted as a profile corruption by Windows..wrongly most of the time. That was a bug, somewhere in Windows, not related whatsoever to MSE or IE. I've seen it happen tens of times without even having MSE installed ;) Again, this problem disappeared on my system. I haven't seen the temp profile bug happen for months now. MSE( which includes sveral applications ) is cleaning unnecessary junk files from the system(may not be from temp folder some other system folders). I have not idea how this is possible. Those files are not necessarily be milware. Before 238GB after now 242GB obviously it is recovered almost 3GB of my HD space.
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August 7th, 2010 3:57pm

Good day, I have a very disturbing problem with my Windows 7. It will only boot on a temporary profile which is missing several icons and barely something works. I've tried to reboot my computer twice, but it didn't work. I've also searched on this forums for a solution, but I didn't find anything. I hope you can help me to solve that problem. Thank you in advance. Definitely this is Microsoft Security Essentials or Internet Explorer. I think some serious bug is there in the Security Essentials or Internet Explorer. Today morning also I got the same screen. This is the second time. Just restarted the system. Now it is fine. MSE or IE ...alright then, can you elaborate? Sure, (according to my research/observation) I am running MSE every week or two days. It is taking 10 to 15 min to get its job done (default settings) . Once that is done, in the background it is cleaning/removing unnecessary installation files from temp etc., folders by recovering atleast 2GB space each time I ran the MSE. One more thing my laptop is brand new one purchased two months ago. Software's I installed are Microsoft Visual Studio Express and SQL Server Express. Removed/Uninstalled Mcafee pre-installed and Installed MSE. and how do you you relate that to the present topic issue? ...okay, seriously, MSE isn't cleaning anything from the temp folder ;) that's not what it's for. The 2 GB you're recovering each time you've run MSE, if that's the result of MSE's job, would mean that MSE has deleted 2GB of malware..which is still weird. Anyway, the issue with the temporary profile being randomly created at start up has to do with profile corruption, or what is being interpreted as a profile corruption by Windows..wrongly most of the time. That was a bug, somewhere in Windows, not related whatsoever to MSE or IE. I've seen it happen tens of times without even having MSE installed ;) Again, this problem disappeared on my system. I haven't seen the temp profile bug happen for months now. MSE( which includes sveral applications ) is cleaning unnecessary junk files from the system(may not be from temp folder some other system folders). I have not idea how this is possible. Those files are not necessarily be milware. Before 238GB after now 242GB obviously it is recovered almost 3GB of my HD space. MSE just doesn't do that, forget it. That's an anti-virus, not a system cleaner. MSE does not include several applications.
August 7th, 2010 6:53pm

Good day, I have a very disturbing problem with my Windows 7. It will only boot on a temporary profile which is missing several icons and barely something works. I've tried to reboot my computer twice, but it didn't work. I've also searched on this forums for a solution, but I didn't find anything. I hope you can help me to solve that problem. Thank you in advance. Definitely this is Microsoft Security Essentials or Internet Explorer. I think some serious bug is there in the Security Essentials or Internet Explorer. Today morning also I got the same screen. This is the second time. Just restarted the system. Now it is fine. MSE or IE ...alright then, can you elaborate? Sure, (according to my research/observation) I am running MSE every week or two days. It is taking 10 to 15 min to get its job done (default settings) . Once that is done, in the background it is cleaning/removing unnecessary installation files from temp etc., folders by recovering atleast 2GB space each time I ran the MSE. One more thing my laptop is brand new one purchased two months ago. Software's I installed are Microsoft Visual Studio Express and SQL Server Express. Removed/Uninstalled Mcafee pre-installed and Installed MSE. and how do you you relate that to the present topic issue? ...okay, seriously, MSE isn't cleaning anything from the temp folder ;) that's not what it's for. The 2 GB you're recovering each time you've run MSE, if that's the result of MSE's job, would mean that MSE has deleted 2GB of malware..which is still weird. Anyway, the issue with the temporary profile being randomly created at start up has to do with profile corruption, or what is being interpreted as a profile corruption by Windows..wrongly most of the time. That was a bug, somewhere in Windows, not related whatsoever to MSE or IE. I've seen it happen tens of times without even having MSE installed ;) Again, this problem disappeared on my system. I haven't seen the temp profile bug happen for months now. MSE( which includes sveral applications ) is cleaning unnecessary junk files from the system(may not be from temp folder some other system folders). I have not idea how this is possible. Those files are not necessarily be milware. Before 238GB after now 242GB obviously it is recovered almost 3GB of my HD space. MSE just doesn't do that, forget it. That's an anti-virus, not a system cleaner. MSE does not include several applications. I read in the microsoft website. MSC comes with set of applications or tools. I have downloaded another stand alone application from MS KB website(not antivirus like registry cleaner). Which is already includeded in the MSE. I deleted downloaded app from my system. I have only one antivirus SW that is MSE.
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August 7th, 2010 9:26pm

Hello, I'm experiencing the same thing; my computer takes a long time to startup, shutdown, and anything is very sluggish; from the mouse to input in the keyboard. Then I also received the Temp User Profile issue. At some point in time, I also received an error message saying the Version of Windows was not valid; which is not true. So I'm really at a standstill, it was working fine and all of a sudden it slowed down tremendously and cannot get into my profile. Any help will be greatly appreciated. Best Regards. Exact same issue. Still trying to find a solution without messing with the registry.
August 10th, 2010 9:24pm

Hello, I'm experiencing the same thing; my computer takes a long time to startup, shutdown, and anything is very sluggish; from the mouse to input in the keyboard. Then I also received the Temp User Profile issue. At some point in time, I also received an error message saying the Version of Windows was not valid; which is not true. So I'm really at a standstill, it was working fine and all of a sudden it slowed down tremendously and cannot get into my profile. Any help will be greatly appreciated. Best Regards. Exact same issue. Still trying to find a solution without messing with the registry. I got this porblem just two times. Two times I restarted the mechine. After restart system is running normallay. In my exprience, Windows is preparing your desktop. once windows is loaded error: profiles not found. 1. Don't be panic. 2. Please do not try to connect to the internet. 3. Dont play around files, registry, profiles backing up your important data. 4. Just restart the mechine. If you got the same screen once again(after restart) contact technical support.
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August 11th, 2010 3:11pm

I had the same issue on a new laptop with Windows 7 ENT. I logged onto the machine as the local admin and removed the domain profile giving trouble and then logged on again as the user...no more problems with the temp profile. "I solved my problem by going into the registry and delete the effected profile's subfolder under HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList" Thanks to Jesper for this fix.
August 17th, 2010 1:15pm

After reviewing the event log, and the registry, i noticed 'denis.bat.v2' under the user i was having an issue with at the location in the registry everyone else has mentioned here (.../profilelist). I went back to my ADS and looked at the user's profile in AD. turns out the previous admin had (mistakenly?) put 'denis.bat' in the field labelled 'Profile Path'. Removing the registry entry and clearing the profile path field in AD, then a relog fixed my issue.
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August 18th, 2010 7:55pm

I think that's what we would call a coincidence!! I've been using Chrome since it was first released and didn't start having issues with temporary profiles until much much later. The problem also stopped for a few months recently but then started again in the last few weeks although now it seems that a reboot almost always solves things rather than having to delete and recreate users. There's probably a shed load of other things that you have done in the last weeks that could also be the cause so I have no idea why you are so confident that Chrome is the issue.Starting on the Vista journey 17/09/06
August 23rd, 2010 8:04pm

Rainboe16 when you refer to... Logged on as admin to a Windows 7 laptop and deleted the TEMP profile. ..people don't know how you deleted the TEMP profile, at least I don't. Maybe someone will clue 'us' in how that/this is deleted, ie; where is the TEMP proflie, and assumedly deletion is then a no brainer? My best to all and happ-e-trails, yourweldguru
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August 26th, 2010 6:25am

Ok hey everyone recently my computer started working fine again what i did was do a system restore to the point before my profile reset and then bobs your uncle it started logging in to my normal profile hope it helps
August 29th, 2010 9:12pm

Tried all these items and finally figured out what my issue was. Hope it helps. Repeatedly logging in one particular user into temp profile on brand new computer. Tried another user on that computer = no issue. Tried that use on another computer = having issue again. This user has been in our client's domain for years, with no reported issues. Upon reviewing AD account further, found that someone had set her Profile Path: incorrectly. They had entered the name of the login script into this field instead. The Win7 box was attempting to save the profile elsewhere, but could not. Removed from Profile Path: option and placed in login script area, and issue fixed. Jeff
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August 30th, 2010 3:26pm

Tried all these items and finally figured out what my issue was. Hope it helps. Repeatedly logging in one particular user into temp profile on brand new computer. Tried another user on that computer = no issue. Tried that use on another computer = having issue again. This user has been in our client's domain for years, with no reported issues. Upon reviewing AD account further, found that someone had set her Profile Path: incorrectly. They had entered the name of the login script into this field instead. The Win7 box was attempting to save the profile elsewhere, but could not. Removed from Profile Path: option and placed in login script area, and issue fixed. Jeff Hi, Surprise.. Surprise.. Surprise.. Atleast your system showed login screen to enter username and password. Everything is done in the background. In my case in the background login screen is there because I heard login screen sound but it is not displayed I got only blanck screen in the front as usual without looking the screen I entered password and I logged in to the system front is only black screen. I hardbooted my mechine. I got the same situation two times.
August 30th, 2010 3:43pm

Hi Everyone This behavior occurs because the account that you use to log on to the computer is a member of one or more of the following groups: Local Guests Group, or, Domain Guests Group. I had the same problem and i solved the problem by removing the user from the domain guests group in the AD. there is not need to delete anything from the registry or edit permissions like i read in posts. Rergards
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September 1st, 2010 3:10pm

I had this problem. I resolved it when i saw the entrees mentioning registry entry in HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList but i deleted the entry for the temp profile, rebooted the system, and was able to log on as my profile. Hope this helps avoid having to recreate user profiles. Windows 7 Enterprise Lenovo ThinkPad T410 Thanks Telth D I have had the some problem with dell studio 1749 it is about 2 months old, problem started out of the blue i log off, and boot my laptop about 2 hours later that is where the problems start you log in as normal instead your welcome on your screen, you get preparing your desktop and log you on to temporary profile with missing several icons and barely something works. I've tried to reboot my computer, but it didn't work. I try some of the other opitions on this forum room with no luck. This problem is with registry and by going to this above path and deleting the temp folder. All i did different was created a new admin account and then follow the above advise. Many Thanks again Matt
September 4th, 2010 6:15pm

Good day, I have a very disturbing problem with my Windows 7. It will only boot on a temporary profile which is missing several icons and barely something works. I've tried to reboot my computer twice, but it didn't work. I've also searched on this forums for a solution, but I didn't find anything. I hope you can help me to solve that problem. Thank you in advance. Definitely this is Microsoft Security Essentials or Internet Explorer. I think some serious bug is there in the Security Essentials or Internet Explorer. Today morning also I got the same screen. This is the second time. Just restarted the system. Now it is fine. MSE or IE ...alright then, can you elaborate? Sure, (according to my research/observation) I am running MSE every week or two days. It is taking 10 to 15 min to get its job done (default settings) . Once that is done, in the background it is cleaning/removing unnecessary installation files from temp etc., folders by recovering atleast 2GB space each time I ran the MSE. One more thing my laptop is brand new one purchased two months ago. Software's I installed are Microsoft Visual Studio Express and SQL Server Express. Removed/Uninstalled Mcafee pre-installed and Installed MSE. and how do you you relate that to the present topic issue? ...okay, seriously, MSE isn't cleaning anything from the temp folder ;) that's not what it's for. The 2 GB you're recovering each time you've run MSE, if that's the result of MSE's job, would mean that MSE has deleted 2GB of malware..which is still weird. Anyway, the issue with the temporary profile being randomly created at start up has to do with profile corruption, or what is being interpreted as a profile corruption by Windows..wrongly most of the time. That was a bug, somewhere in Windows, not related whatsoever to MSE or IE. I've seen it happen tens of times without even having MSE installed ;) Again, this problem disappeared on my system. I haven't seen the temp profile bug happen for months now. MSE( which includes sveral applications ) is cleaning unnecessary junk files from the system(may not be from temp folder some other system folders). I have not idea how this is possible. Those files are not necessarily be milware. Before 238GB after now 242GB obviously it is recovered almost 3GB of my HD space. Now a days I am not cleaning IE cache. My system is working excellently. No temp profiles problem. No more blue screen either.
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September 9th, 2010 9:29am

Thanks I had the same issue with my profile the fix from Marclander worked like a charm.....
September 29th, 2010 9:45am

Worked for me, although I had to delete both. Thanks! I'm on a domain. I tried the renaming of the \HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList trick but that didn't work, then tried deleting both profile lists, logged out, connected the ethernet, waited for 5 mintues, and A LA Peanut Butter and Jelly Sanwiches Poof! It worked! Note: Since this was on a new machine, I had already already deleted the actual c:\users\userprofile directory before trying this. It might work without deleting it.
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October 1st, 2010 11:51am

I had the problem on my Server 2003/Windows XP network that new machines with Windows 7 and upgraded machines could only log onto the network under a temporary profile. As a domain admin I had no problem with my own machine but had no luck with anyone else's. What worked for me was ensuring that the profiles folder had permissions for everybody to create folders - specifically the username .V2 file. Once this was done logging on under the username created the required profile folder. Regards
October 8th, 2010 5:24am

I work for a huge internet based corporation, and all work in done on a domain. We started having the same problem too. Here is the fixed that desktop engineering released. It is similar to some posts above, but does differ. Read carefully , it has worked for all of us so far. I'll post exactly how they posted it. _______Team, Now that we are getting some Windows 7 computers in the environment, I’m sure you will see new issues that we didn’t see with Windows XP. When you are faced with a new issue, let’s capture them and make sure we are all aware. One that the team here is seeing that is deploying Windows 7 is getting the temp profile when logging on. This is a result of deleting the user profile using Explorer instead of the proper way. This worked with Windows XP but since Windows Vista, you are required to do it the Microsoft way. Now if you accidentally deleted the profile through Explorer, there is an associated registry key that was not deleted which is handled by the above steps which is why you should do it that way. In the case where you are getting the temp profile logon, log off and then back on as another account with admin rights and launch the registry editor (regedit or regedt32). Locate the following key folder: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList There will be the standard keys of S-1-5-18, S-1-5-19 and S-1-5-20 along with some longer ones. Look in each of those for the one with the specific user profile path (i.e. C:\Users\jdoe) and you would delete that key folder so if it is S-1-5-21-854245398-1004336348-725345534-84926, that is the key folder you would delete along with all the values within it. Below is an example of a real key and all the values within it. This is the local administrator which should be associated with the key S-1-5-21-2731504920-357048610-1072898439-500 and within the key you have the following values: (Default) REG_SZ (value not set) Flags REG_DWORD 0x00000000 (0) ProfileImagePath REG_EXPAND_SZ C:\Users\Administrator ProfileLoadTimeHigh REG_DWORD 0x00000000 (0) ProfileLoadTimeLow REG_DWORD 0x00000000 (0) RefCount REG_DWORD 0x00000000 (0) Sid REG_BINARY 01 05 00 00 00 00 00 05 15 00 00 00 etc. State REG_DWORD 0x00000304 (772) You’ll see that the ProfileImagePath points to C:\Users\Administrator so this is the correct key to delete if the local administrator was the one getting the temp profile when logging on.__________ Hope this Helps
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October 14th, 2010 9:54pm

I'm going to go try this now. If it works, thank you so much
October 22nd, 2010 9:22am

I had this problem and it turned out to be PERMISSIONS on my USER folder. Try c:\Users\ and click on your profile - you may get a popup like I did that said I didn't have permission to the folder! It offered to fix it (add permission) I clicked OK. Logged out and back in OK. Problem SOLVED! Regards, Feizex.
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October 28th, 2010 5:33pm

!!!PROBLEM SOLVED!!!! Dear , I have Fix This Problem On my Laptop.Very Simply my domain user not logon always create temp user. Solution. Step1: login Administrator user Step2: Run---->REGEDIT----->HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE---expend---->Software------>Microsoft------>Windows NT----- -->CURRENT VERSION------>PROFILELIST------>check any see .bak profile.. Step3: On right click THIS .BAK LINE --->rename on .bak profile------------->JUST TYPE example .bak.old just .old type.and save. Step: and then loff administrator profile and relogin user domain profile...OK Thanks
November 3rd, 2010 2:54pm

Great answers guys!Anyone knew the root cause of this?Windows update?
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November 22nd, 2010 1:50am

It worked ! You must delete the profiles first though, then fix the registery.
December 1st, 2010 8:01am

This worked perfectly for me. Thanks
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December 9th, 2010 11:58am

Lots of solutions on this thread - not clear if there is any one that always works. If so can someone please say what this definitive solution is (and whether MS have any intention of fixing the bug). FYI my situ is very similar to others stated - a system with 2 users accounts, intermittent fault when the non-administrator account logs on second and is taken into temporary account. Always fixed by a re-boot. Also the account keeps asking for a password when I as the administrator keep switching the Password off Thanks
December 11th, 2010 9:46am

The answer really depends on the context. They can be divided into two camps. Marclander's solution (below) appears to work if you are dealing with a purely local profile of Windows 7. "You only have to do these steps: 1- Logon with local admin profile. (or other account different that you want to use, but with admin privileges). 2- Open regedit and go to HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList. Here you can see all SIDs of loaded profiles and probably you'll have some of them repeated but with .bak extensions. 3- So if you want to recover your profile, desktop icons, ect... you only have to delete the profile with no .bak extension and rename the other, deleting only the .bak extension of it: Ex: In Regedit (HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList) I have: SID-1292428093-343818398-2115-158554 (1º Delete this Key) SID-1292428093-343818398-2115-158554.bak (2º Rename This Key to SID-1292428093-343818398-2115-158554). 4- Restart your computer or Logoff and Logon with the profile that you want to restore and that's all, your profile will be restored Perfectly." This solution failed for me, since I wasn't dealing with a local profile. I was dealing with one requiring domain-based authentication. None of these keys were present in that registry location. And I was sure not going to do a reinstall of an entire OS since 1) multiple other users were already using it, and 2) loss of the new toys and hard drive encryption from the company IT was unacceptable. It wasn't until I came across Richii's solution (below), that I found anything acceptable among these posts. "I did find a solution for an isntance like what I did. I deleted the profile from the folder c:\Users\Profile instead of deleting through the "Advanced Settings" (correct way) as it always worked in XP to recreate a profile. This applied to a domain account (not sure if its different off a domain) Here's how I fixed it even though I could not delete or rename the registry key. I recreated the folder in the same location with the same name. (just an empty folder) Logged in as the corrupted profile to see if it would make new files in the empty folder. (it did not) I copied all the files from the TEMP directory which was created to the new folder I made in the old spot. (not sure if this step was necessary) I logged back in as an admin account and was able to delete it through what is apparently the "correct" way. (right click computer > properties > advanced system settings > Settings) The profile showed up as Status of "Backup" it was also showing up with a registry key indicated as .bak when I was searching for it in the registry. Strange quark hope this helps someone else." Long story short, this solution worked for my case. I would try checking the User Accounts > Advanced Settings and make sure the other profile doesn't have multiple entries. Or if you "manually" deleted it, that it gets deleted the "correct" way above.
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December 14th, 2010 6:59pm

"What happened to me was that I deleted my own profile just to get a new clean one and all of a sudden Windows 7 complains about Temporary Profile. It didn´t matter if i Rebooted or anything. I alway got a Temporary Profile. I solved my problem by going into the registry and delete the effected profile's subfolder under HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList After that all was well again! Best Wishes, Jesper Bernle " **This fix worked just fine for me as well. Thanks to everyone responsible!
December 15th, 2010 3:55pm

yes, your advise helped me solve my problem as well. many thanks,
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January 4th, 2011 12:45pm

Well done, It works very well, good job offering your experience with us. Also after deleting the effected profile, do not forget to restart the machine. Regards
January 7th, 2011 3:32pm

This did the trick...thanks ever so much. :-)
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January 10th, 2011 3:18pm

This worked for me (posted by Marclander Friday, March 05, 2010 9:35 AM)....deleting and renaming profilelist members. Except key in Windows 7 for local profile is: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList Many thanks!!!! Symptoms of problem: - logon took a long time...and finally ended up logged in as TEMP user. - original profile (c:\users\xxxxx) was not deleted. Everything was intact in this folder. - McAfee did not find any viruses or spyware. - was able to log in with another local user id. - software was not installed prior to problem.
January 11th, 2011 7:29pm

Microsoft sucks. They cannot even fix a huge bug in their operating system that has been around for nearly 2 years now and plaguing many users as can be seen from the long list of replies here, and many attempts to fix the problem without Microsoft fixes. Microsoft has yet to reply to this thread and patch anything in the updates to resolve this problem. I am beginning to wonder whether a bunch of monkeys work at Microsoft and just randomly pound on keyboards until something works and that is the new operating system. And don't worry monkeys, you don't have to fix any problems for years and years, we'll just ignore the problems until your random keyboard pounding creates a new OS, and we'll just say the brand new shiny OS fixes all the bugs, even though it's chalk full of nasty bugs. But don't worry monkeys, people are still buying our OSes, so you get your paycheck and go home and don't worry about ever fixing those user bugs. Nice job Microsoft, good business plan....
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January 17th, 2011 1:37pm

I too have this problem. I shelled out > $200 to buy Windows 7 Home Premium to get it too. I really should get my head examined! I've screwed around, reinstalled the OS - this is ridiculous! I am buying a Mac for the family and I will put Linux on this laptop! We have had an iMac for almost 3 years and there has only ever been 1 - and I do mean 1 - problem with it in all that time (it wouldn't mount an external USB hard drive being used for backup/Time Machine, just re-formatted the thing and backed-up again). Bought Windows 7 and within a week I have this stupid problem that makes it basically unusable. Cheers
January 17th, 2011 10:01pm

Simply go to advanced system settings,(System properties) advance, user profiles and check status tab. Delete from here all profiles with status showing Temporary and you are done. Here you cannot delete local profile but you can delete temp. profile after selecting. No need to edit registry. Reboot.
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January 20th, 2011 2:51pm

Eli Cesana is a genius, after reading all of this registry deleting, temp folder clearing, rebooting, standing on one foot and jumping in a circle, this is the answer!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Eli!!!!! Eli!!!!!!! Eli!!!!!! it is 2 AM and i am dancing a jig i am so happy. this answer has plagued this company for the last three IT consultants, and now thanks to Eli i have solved it and potentially secured a significant contract!! Nighty Night all. Think i will put on my Eli mask and wake my wife.
February 18th, 2011 2:32am

Ok let me break it down for all you network admin and have this machine logging in on a DOMAIN. Go to your Active Directory - Select the user you are trying to log in under - Click Properties - Select Member of - Remove Domain Guests - Reboot Workstation - Create a test folder on the destop and log off. - Then log back on and the folder is still on the desktop - FIXED
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March 6th, 2011 1:11pm

Found a soultion from Microsoft that worked for me: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947215
March 7th, 2011 1:33pm

Actually regedit is a best the to fix this problem and easy and fast. but if simialar thing happen to MAC :) you will feel more frustrated. Less support, less knowledge base, relative lower population doing "real testing on production" :) Well IMO, MAC is catching up a lot by good product and UI design, in the ad of Mac vs PC, it is right "this time will be different" but PC is PC, orange is orange, of course apple is apple. I have some guys ask me what laptop their kidds should buy for school, Mac or Windows? Short answer with question: "What is the school's IT infrustracture and software, Windows based or Linuxish based?" Same anwser will apply to business, because the answer is crystal clear.
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March 9th, 2011 7:21pm

@ Rhode Li: what's all that for, Mac, Windows, Linux, what are you talking about? wrong thread? wrong forum? ... if you feel like chatting, call your friends :)))
March 10th, 2011 5:02am

SOLUTION>> well i had the same problem tried everything still temporary profile in w7. Turns out the problem was in my shared permissions on the server which appeared right but you need a sub folder as well.. Try this lets say you have a profile named Ken folder would be on server as follows Drive>profiles>ken set permissions on profiles for shared and security as users, then goto ken folder and remove users and just have it shared with admin and profile name (ken) I couldnt believe it after installing server, and w7 this fixed it.. its because w7 creates a second folder called v2 or something and if it doesnt have a shared subfolder with shares/security set it wont work... My original share was \\server\Ken which changed to \\server\profiles\ken with profiles to all users, and ken just to the active directory accont ken worked like a jem... Easily overlooked but was the case with my setup
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March 30th, 2011 6:07pm

This is the fix for this error. WORK PERFECTLY. Thanks
April 6th, 2011 5:14am

I've used this many times and it's worked.
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April 13th, 2011 11:24am

Hi, This help was very helpful. I encountered this issue on a Windows 7 Pro PC installed on a Domain. But I would also add that in my case I had to set the DWord value 'State' (under the profile I just renamed) to 100 (256 decimal). Otherwise it kept to log on with temporary profile. Best regards, Julien.
May 4th, 2011 3:55am

I had this problem on a couple brand new Dells out of the box, Windows 7 Pro 32bit. One Optiplex 380 and one 990. The problem occurred both on a local profile and a domain profile. I tried all the registry deletion recommendations/suggestions mentioned here on both profiles and it did not work. Neither profile would save the personalizations and one (the local) would give me the "temporary profile created" message. I removed the AD domain user account from the Domain Guests group and that fixed the domain user profile. The local profile was a member of the Administrators and Users groups. After I removed the the local profile from the Users group and left it as only a member of the Administrators group, the problem was fixed at the next login. Go figure...
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May 10th, 2011 5:24pm

Why do't microsoft Fix this issue. I thought it will be fix with SP1 on windows 7 machines. All of my machines do that, I have many users logging onto different machines and most of the times they are auto logged into 'temporary profiles' then they users simply sit infront of the system and wait for help. I have to waste lots of hours by manually going into the registry settings mentioned above and deleting the 'Keyname.bak.baj' files and the 'keyname.bak' files to make the systems go back to the original profiles. Microsoft Help plz.
May 16th, 2011 9:09am

I have encountered same and/or similar issues and I've found that In Windows 7 the supported approach for removing local profiles is using the Advanced System Settings in the system properties, “User Profiles” settings. The reason for this approach is because if a profile is manually deleted from the “Users” folder it does not remove the security identifier (SID) from the profile list in the registry. This can then cause errors like “The user profile service failed the logon. User profile cannot be loaded”, when trying to logon. If this occurs you will need to modify the registry and delete the error SID and create a new profile. (Refer to article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947215). This worked for me hope it helps you!
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May 19th, 2011 2:24pm

this just happened to me...and after trying to follow some incredibly confusing advice (for the non computer programmer) my computer won't even start. Thanks Microsoft! Great servvie! (NOT).
May 20th, 2011 2:57am

this just happened to me...and after trying to follow some incredibly confusing advice (for the non computer programmer) my computer won't even start. Thanks Microsoft! Great servvie! (NOT). It just happened to me few hours ago and I follow instuction on this link http://www.sysprobs.com/fix-temporary-profile-windows-7. on my registry there are two keyname that has similar name S-1-5-21-3812901757-1174136654-3845516517-1000 and S-1-5-21-3812901757-1174136654-3845516517-1000.bak on S-1-5-21-3812901757-1174136654-3845516517-1000.bak (maybe the keyname has different name on your computer) there is binary file that has "ProfileImagePath", try change value data on "ProfileImagePath" (double click) change value with C:\Users\xxxx change xxxx with your username that you used to logon to windows after that delete the the keyname that hasn't .bak extension and rename the keyname that has .bak extension S-1-5-21-3812901757-1174136654-3845516517-1000.bak to S-1-5-21-3812901757-1174136654-3845516517-1000 (only remove the .bak) after that, log off your windows and logon again it works for me, I hope this is works for you too -movieboxmania-
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May 20th, 2011 7:28am

Phoenix: This applies only to Active Directory and New Roaming Profiles: I just ran into this exact same problem: after setting up the profile path in Active Directory, the user recieves an error that they are using a temporary profile. This ultimatly had to do with the "profile path" I had entered "\\sbserver\usershares\%username%". The server will try to append and extension indicating the profile/windows version to the path, in my case it was ".V2" making the path "\\sbserver\usershares\john.V2". Unfortunately, the user does not have permission to modify the "UserShares" folder so a temporary profile was used for that session. This can be resolved by adding a trailing backslash making the profile path a folder named "\\sbserver\usershares\john\.V2\". To make thing more windows like, I ultimately made the profile path "\\sbserver\usershares\%username%\PROFILE" and windows translated this to "\\sbserver\usershares\john\PROFILE.V2". This applies to existing roaming profile that started acting up: For roaming profiles that started acting up, you will be heading for more of an up hill battle: the profile can exist on multiple machines, and the server, and will replicate from machine to server to machine. You will want to rename the user profile folder on the server or current workstation as this is the current copy. From there, go to each and every workstation that has the profile in question log in, and rename it. Once the use logs in again, it will create a fresh new profile. Copy his documents, favorites, PSTs, and so on back into his new profile. Make sure to do this on all machines that have a copy of the profile, otherwise a login on the wrong machine could corrupt his profile again. Workgroup/standalone computers: This is usually due to a corrupt user profile, corrupt default profile, corrupt user account, file system, or windows problems. Start by renaming the profile and letting windows create a new profile. Copy back the users data. The second step is to rename the users profile directory, delete the user, create a new user, and copy the users data back. A fatally corrupted file system can be causing user profile issues. Run a check disk and retry the proceeding steps. If that fails, windows could be to blame. But always give web searches a good try before blowing away Windows. Shawn Zernik Internetwork Consulting
May 23rd, 2011 1:23am

I was logged into a temporary profile. Saw this http://windows.microsoft.com/en-AU/windows-vista/fix-a-corrupted-user-profile but the problem is that when i create a new user profile i cannot see a folder for the newly created profile in the profile folder and so, i cannot copy the files from my old profilr to the new one. Any workaround for this?
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June 19th, 2011 3:47pm

I was logged into a temporary profile. Saw this http://windows.microsoft.com/en-AU/windows-vista/fix-a-corrupted-user-profile but the problem is that when i create a new user profile i cannot see a folder for the newly created profile in the profile folder and so, i cannot copy the files from my old profile to the new one. Any workaround for this?
June 19th, 2011 3:47pm

i. Log on to the system by using an administrative user account other than the user account that is experiencing the problem. ii. Back up all data in the current user's profile folder if the profile folder still exists, and then delete the profile folder. By default, the profile resides in the following location: %SystemDrive%\Users\UserName iii. Click Start, type regedit in the Start Search box, and then press ENTER. iv. If you are prompted for an administrator password or for confirmation, type your password, or click Continue. v. Locate the following registry subkey: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList vi. Under the ProfileList subkey, delete the subkey that is named SID.bak. Note SID is a placeholder for the security identifier (SID) of the user account that is experiencing the problem. The SID.bak subkey should contain a ProfileImagePath registry entry that points to the original profile folder of the user account that is experiencing the problem. vii. Exit Registry Editor. viii. Log off the system. ix. Log on to the system again. Link you may refer to: A temporary profile is loaded after you log on to a Windows Vista-based system:http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947242 (Holds good for Windows 7) http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947215Microsoft TechNet Forum Bandara
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June 21st, 2011 10:40pm

I have the same issue with a Win 7 Pro on a domain. Did anyone find a real answer to this?
June 22nd, 2011 6:45pm

PLS check my post which on Wednesday, June 22, 2011 2:35 AM, Its working for Win 7 ProMicrosoft TechNet Forum Bandara
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June 23rd, 2011 12:09am

It work. Thanks Jesper !
June 24th, 2011 5:38am

There is a way of fixing this problem. First you need to shut down your computer, the start it again and it will log to your normal user profile, then go to the internet and download Registery Mechanic, it will fix this problem automaticaly. Here is the serial for Registery Mechanic, u know for the activation : Name: Kim Weems Code: 62EB-03BE-C359-CAFE-8BC7-C252- 678D-EA8C
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July 5th, 2011 7:04am

"Simon KALX" wrote in message news:ea749dd6-7c40-4e33-b78c-adc1b8783cc3... There is a way of fixing this problem. First you need to shut down your computer, the start it again and it will log to your normal user profile, then go to the internet and download Registery Mechanic, it will fix this problem automaticaly. Registry Mechanic will fix NOTHING - and may well break the machine even further. DO NOT use it. To be able to use a Registry 'Cleaner' safely, you need to have enough knowledge of the registry not to need to use the cleaner in the first place. -- Noel Paton | Nil Carborundum Illegitemi | CrashFixPC | The Three-toed Sloth
July 5th, 2011 8:19am

Hi all! Fix Temporary Profile in Windows 7 Issue 1) Log in with temp profile. 2) Start registry editor by typing regedit in find box in Windows 7. (if 'regedit' not found, go to C drive> Windows> 'regedit') 3) Navigate the following location in Windows 7. 4) You can see similar keys under profile list with .bak difference, as shown below. 5) You correct profile key is marked as bak. Currently your Windows 7 computer logged in with fresh profile with same key. So, rename the new profile key ( which is not having.bak) and remove .bak from correct profile key. See below. 6) That’s it. Log off and log in with your user name and password. You must get your icons and profile settings back in Windows 7. This is very simple and easy method to fix temp profile in Windows 7 issue. In case it doesn't work for you then repeat steps 1-4 and delete both the similar profiles. Then close all windows and log-off and re-login. This will create a new profile for your id and it will be permanent. Note: in this case your previous desktop settings will be permanently deleted. But it will resolve the issue permanently. Tips: In win7 we have option to change the location of desktop. documents etc. So it is good to change the location to D-Drive, so that in case of re-formatting or deleting profile, your ikons and settings can be retrieved from D-Drive.
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July 10th, 2011 5:21am

Please follow the solution provided above.
July 10th, 2011 5:23am

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