I'm having a problem where after power faliure during a reboot Windows says there's a problem with the user profile and logs me in to a temporary one. This happens both with my personal account and the Administrator one.
I found this guide which explains how to fix the issue, but the problem is that I'd rather not backup my user folder, because it's pretty heavy – not sure of the exact amount, but it could be tens or hundreds of GBs. I thought that maybe I could copy the system files from that folder to another one and rename them, but that doesn't seem to work, because everything I do while in the temporary profile is undone at logout.
I could delete the user account and let Windows keep the files, but then I'd run into the same problem: it's a really big folder, and restoring it would take a very long time. Plus, I'm not sure if I would lose stuff that Windows doesn't back up, like saved games in AppData
.
EDIT: Something I just realized may have something to do with this. My Users folder is actually on a separate partition, and C:\Users
is a symlink pointing to it.
My goal is to find out how to restore my profile; everything I mentioned until now is what I tried and couldn't do for whatever reason. Does anyone know of a better method, or of a way to backup my user folder without waiting hours and hours for it to copy?
Best Answer
Try running a chkdsk /f on the hard drive, see if this fixes the corrupt account(s)
Other than a chkdsk there is no easy fix.
If no joy move to a new user profile, scroll down to "Copying your user profile"
This article is for XP but is very similar for W7
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In this user profile recovery technique, you’ll attempt to revive the user profile by creating a new account and, subsequently, a new user profile. You’ll then copy your old user profile in its entirety to the new account. While this may sound like an operation that will simply replicate the problem over to the new account, it does indeed revive the user profile on occasion. Again, keep in mind that the success of this attempt depends on the severity of the damage to the user profile. However, since it’s a relatively painless operation, it’s worth a shot.
To begin, access the Control Panel and launch the User Accounts tool. Next, select the Create A New Account link. Then, give the account a name and click Next. When prompted to pick an account type, make sure the Computer Administrator option button is selected, and then click the Create Account button.
Once you create the new account, close the User Accounts tool. Then, click Start | Log Off. When you see the Log Off Windows dialog box, click the Log Off button. When you see either the Welcome Screen or the Log On To Windows dialog box, select or type the name you used for the new account. As soon as you do, Windows XP will create a user profile for the new account.
When the user profile creation procedure is complete and the system starts up, immediately click Log Off. Then, log back on to the working account.
Now, open the Start menu, right-click My Computer, and select Properties. When you see the System Properties dialog box, select the Advanced System Settings on the left. Then, locate and click the Settings button in the User Profiles section.
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You’ll now see a User Profiles dialog box that looks like the one shown below.
You’ll use the User Profiles tool to copy your old user profile to the new account. Select your old user account then click the Copy To button. When the Copy To dialog box appears, click the Browse button and then use the resulting Browse For Folder dialog box to locate the Documents and Settings folder and select the new account you created. At this point, the Copy To dialog box will look like the one shown in Figure C. To continue, just click OK. You’ll then see a confirmation dialog box that informs you that the original files will be deleted and prompts you to confirm the copy operation. Just click Yes.
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At this point, you’ll see the path to your new account in the Copy To dialog box. Once the copy operation finishes, close the User Profiles dialog box and the System Properties dialog box, then log off. At this point, you can attempt to log on to the new account. If this technique was able to successfully recover the user profile, everything should be the way it was.