[Fixed] Windows 10 upgrade and TEMP profiles

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, I upgraded one of my computers from Windows 7 to Windows 10 using Windows Update. It had been nagging me to upgrade for awhile and I finally gave in and did it. The upgrade appeared to go smoothly, but when I logged on to Windows 10 for the first time, I realized that I didn’t have any of my settings or files. I checked the Application event log and sure enough, I was logged in with a TEMP profile.

I Googled this a bit, thinking that perhaps it has happened to a few other people who could point me to a quick resolution, but it didn’t seem to be a common problem. Also, the proposed fixes (like running sfc /scannow didn’t strike me as being very promising.

So I open the Local Users and Groups manager (lusrmgr.msc) and checked the group membership of my account. I found that it was a member of the Administrators group and a HomeUsers group, but not a member of the Users group. I checked a Windows 10 computer that I had built from the 10240 build ISO as a clean install and didn’t find a HomeUsers group at all. Back on the problem computer, I added my broken account to the Users group, restarted, and logged in. This time, Windows took my account through the typical first-run setup stuff and then loaded the correct profile, with all of my settings and files from Windows 7 intact.

So, if you run into the problem where an account on a recently upgraded Windows 10 computer is missing settings and files, check the group membership. If the account is not a member of the Users group, you will not be able to log in properly. Add the account to that group, logout and then log back in. Your problem should be fixed

One thought on “[Fixed] Windows 10 upgrade and TEMP profiles

  1. John Schell

    This issue exists in an other way … and will not be solved by your way to do it.

    I have also upgraded to windows 10 from a 8.1 system. Some things works correctely, but some programs was “moved” to a new user

    Now this windows have teh following directorys in thec:\ user

    Administrator (a DIR)
    All Users LNK
    PSCI-b16 (this is my correct user ) a DIR
    Default DIR
    Default User LNK
    Default migrated DIR
    Public DIR
    TEMP DIR
    TEMP.b16
    TEMP.b16.000 DIR

    Some program Datas are stored in the TEMP.b16.000 DIR. Every time when I shut down teh computer and restart it .. he creates a new TEMP.b16.??? DIRECTORY. First teher was TEMP.b16 then the Temp.b16.000 and at the next restart he will probably create the next TEMP.b16.000.??? directory.

    For the moment I have moved the datas of Thunderbird in a new profile on a NAS … in this way I can reinstall TB after a new start … and create a Profile .. where he datas are on the NAS …

    In the same way I have restored Firefox …

    But these are tournarrounds … and I need a better way to solve this problem.

    For the moment I do not shut down the computer to avoid to reinstall some programs (Firefox, Thunderbird, Open Office, Libre Office …) Some other Programs works fine from her correct location and with her correct ini-datas…

    An other crazy thing is, that libre office portable does not start from a sub Directory named program files portables\libreoffice … first I have think that this is for the reason that libre office have a bug and use only the first 8 chrs from teh program files portables … but if I try to put libre office in a Sub Dir with a stupid name like abc he says to me that he can not install any program in the user Dir of PSCI-b16 it seems that all directories are read only.

    I am very disappointed that MS have not fund and do not seek solutions for these issues. This since more the 6 Months…

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