New users behaving badly

Clogboy said:

Last week I upgraded my mom's Windows 8.1 laptop to Windows 10 using the Media Creation Tool. (this being a celeron 1,7ghz with only 4GB memory took forever.)
Anyway when it was done, I tried adding a new user.

First issue with the new user is that the Start menu wouldn't show. So I stopped for a couple of days to find a solution online, and couldn't find anything helpful.
So I deleted the user profile and wanted to create a few new ones (the one I initially needed, and one for myself for testing purposes). However, both aren't working. When I try to log into one of them, it says the service User Profile Service prevents the user from logging in (not sure how it's written in English, using Dutch version). Googled and found that this could be resolved by going into regedit and recover a .bak listing. But the users weren't even in the profile list.

So has Windows gone bonkers? Is it adviseable to revert to Windows 8.1? (Or, make a backup of the important files, and do a clean install?) Help please, any good advice is appreciated. This is driving me nuts.

Hi.
I wouldn't revert to W8 just yet. :)

You could try to Reset the PC:
Settings>Update and Security>Recovery> Reset this PC

If that doesn't do it, you might try an in-place upgrade to resolve the problems.

Note:
Please be sure any 3rd-party anti virus are uninstalled, and use Windows Defender. Same goes for 3rd-party firewall - uninstall and use Windows firewall. Remove Google Chrome x64 (it has issues right now), and Speccy, and any hard drive monitoring software. If you need Google Chrome, install the 32-bit version.

Let us know how it goes.

Clogboy said:

Might as well start from scratch... who knows what other problems or legacy issues may be lurking.

Well, resetting the PC and then creating a new account would be a good and easy/quick test, since you're prepared to do a clean install anyway. It couldn't hurt to just try it and see if it works. As long as the system is activated, you will be able to do as many clean installs as you want/need.

Clogboy said:

Too bad she won't appreciate how much difference a SSD upgrade would make.

You have a point there!

Clogboy said:

Ofcourse, I mean doing a Windows 8.1 install using the product key that came with her laptop and upgrade from there (I already prepared a USB drive using the media creation tool, with the W10 x64 home image.) Or is there a way to retrieve the W10 activated product key so I can boot from USB immediately...
Edit: or I could pop the USB drive in the upgraded and activated laptop, and opt for a custom install. Doh

Yeah, you don't have to start over from W8.1, if the system has already been activated.

All Settings>Update and Security>Activation

If the system has been activated since the W10 upgrade, you're good to install W10 again and again. There is no keycode necessary. W10 consumes the W8.1 key, and activation is based on a hash from the main system components, and stored on the MS servers. You can boot from the USB stick, select install, save nothing, and "skip" when it asks for a keycode. As long as the system has been upgraded once, and activated, no more upgrading necessary.