Fix “You are logged into a Temporary Profile” in Windows 7
Posted by RichardMar 1
When using Windows 7, if you receive a message in the bottom right of the desktop stating that “You are logged into a Temporary Profile.” this indicates that your user profile is corrupt. It also means that the system will not retain any profile changes / files created by this user until the problem is fixed. But never fear! There is a, relatively, simple solution;
1. Logout & login as a different / your “backup” user.
(If you don’t have a backup account please make one! You should always have one! It should be an “administrator” level account with a strong password)
2. Navigate to the “C:\Users” and backup / copy the folder with your problematic user profile’s name.
(If it does not exist then skip this step)
3. Delete the TEMP folder in this same directory.
4. Open “Control Panel” -> User Accounts ->User Accounts -> Manage User Accounts” & delete the problematic account.
5. Open “regedit” (via the “Search / Run” box of the start menu). & navigate to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList”, check each sub folder to find which one belongs to the problematic user profile (via inspection fo the “ProfileImagePath” key) and delete the relevant folder.
6. Restart your system.
7. Login as your backup user again & re-create the problematic user from scratch.
8. Restart your system and login as your new version of your, now fully functioning, user!
(NOTE: You can now look through the “backed-up” copy of your old user profile folder, if you were able to make one in step 2, and copy anything you want to keep from it onto your new “clean” user profile. Remember to look through it with hidden files & folders visible; Organise -> Folder & search options -> View -> Show hidden files, folders & drives ).
