Fix You've been signed in with a temporary profile in Windows 10  

windows forced update to 20h2, and now my regular user account can't login.
it uses temporary profile.

my admin user account still works.

the regular user folder still exists under c:\users\username

i deleted all the extra registry folders under
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Windows NT\\CurrentVersion\\ProfileList
but i also backed up the registry key.

after i deleted the extra registry keys corresponding to my regular user account,
it created a new profile "username.PC"
restoring the registry key doesn't restore the temporary profile behavior.

How do I connect my old regular user account back so Windows can access the original c:\users\username folder.

is the fix in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList ?

damn. it didn't work.


i truncated .bak from the registry key

corrected the profileimagepath

changes State to 0


and upon reboot and login attempt, it still wants to use a temporary account after trying to "configure windows"

I even changed the ACL permissions of the old user folder to allow access

it's like Windows is blind to the old user folder.

The registry hacks can't link the user to the folder.


I don't understand how the mandatory update to 20H2 can screw up an account so badly like this.

Thank you for this info!!!! I logged in one day and all my programs acted as if I never used them before, but my wifi and virus programs were working fine. Later in the day I realized that all my data was gone, but all my programs were still there. I thought I was hacked, but I never received any ransom demands. I called my anti-virus program tech support. They finally realized I had not been hacked, and showed me where my files were. It seems that they were moved. I started re-logging into my programs & apps, but then I had to reboot for a anti-virus update and when I logged back in all my settings were gone, again. My Windows menu and other system files quit working. I started searching for answers again. I finally discovered that I was logged into a TEMP profile, but I never received any such message. I checked "sfc" & "dism" but found no errors. Other solutions were to create a new login or to reinstall Window. Reinstalling Windows seemed like the nuclear option. Thankfully, I found this article, printed it out. It worked. Thank you for your detailed answer.

I followed the option 2. It works for my case.
Thanks Brink!!
Great!

Thank You. a couple of extra steps
1. Before altering the registry open File - Export to export a copy of the registry to hard drive or external device
2. If you renamed the .bak you will no longer have a .bak file,
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\S-1-5-22-252375982-3293547494-12345678-1001
Open regedit once machine is working again Right click on profile key select export, name as profile_export
rename existing key in example above ending in 1001 to end in .backup I use this extension so windows can create a .bak sometime, nobody seems to know when or if windows will create a .bak so at least this way you have a copy in your registry.
Right click on Profilelist Import profile_export this will give you an entry ending in 1001
Hope this helps