Thank you SO MUCH Brink. This forum- you, has been more helpful than anything :)

Okay yeah. I think that would be the best option from here. I'll let you know if I figure out anything else.

Do you think this means I have a corrupted user account? I've already tried to do a system restore but there is only one very recent restore point- which is extremely frustrating as I've set the...

Unfortunately, this method didn't work for me. I logged in again to a identical looking profile as the temporary account without the error message, after deleting both keys. Still missing desktop...

Thanks.
The temp account that came up after I logged in had missing items on the desktop and factory settings elsewhere. I still see my original user account folder located under the directory...

What should happen after completing step 9? Will I be able to log back in to my original windows user account, just without the original user settings being present? Will all of my programs and files...