windows 7 lost profile

Lynne Desrochers · June 27, 2012, 09:56:13 AM

I have a user who has lost their profile. It's a win 7 machine. I've tried renaming their account to .old and logging back in, but it keeps logging in as a TEMP file, not the true profile. I also don't want to lose anything on the old profile. Does anyone have any tips tricks to get it back? thanks!

Charlie Charbonneau · June 27, 2012, 10:09:44 AM

I think this is what I did the time I had the issue. First copy the profile folder so you have a backup. Delete the user out of user accounts and recreate. then once you've recreated the user paste the profile back into the new profile.

You might save this as a last ditch effort, as I'm not sure if this is the correct method or just worked as a fluke when I did it! Let's see what others say!

Jeff Zylstra · June 27, 2012, 12:17:31 PM

Quote from: Charlie Charbonneau on June 27, 2012, 10:09:44 AM
I think this is what I did the time I had the issue. First copy the profile folder so you have a backup. Delete the user out of user accounts and recreate. then once you've recreated the user paste the profile back into the new profile.

You might save this as a last ditch effort, as I'm not sure if this is the correct method or just worked as a fluke when I did it! Let's see what others say!

I am going to offer a caveat to this. I did something similar to this and ended up corrupting the profile again by copying the old registry files back. I think they are NTUser.DAT and NTUser.INI, if I'm not mistaken. At least those 2 files need to be recreated and will be created when you create the new user on the domain. The rest of the files are just data and can be copied over with no ill effects. Please jump in here if I am incorrect or have missed something.

Charlie Charbonneau · June 27, 2012, 12:23:19 PM

Good to know Jeff!

Jeff Zylstra · June 27, 2012, 12:29:16 PM

Quote from: Charlie Charbonneau on June 27, 2012, 12:23:19 PM
Good to know Jeff!

Lessons learned at the University of Life, School of Hard Knocks are never forgotten, and rarely repeated!

The files that I mentioned are hidden files, so unhide them first before copying. If you don't you will be told that there are hidden files and if you want to copy them or not. Don't copy them.

Mark · June 27, 2012, 01:07:36 PM

Rebuild the profile. With the user logged out, rename their profile on the server AND on the workstation (f not using roaming profiles, then just on the workstation). Renaming to .old should work fine, then have them log back in. This will create a new profile completely and then you can copy desktop icons, favorites, etc from the old profile back into the new profile.

Some settings will be lost, but this is minor. If they use PST files in Outlook, you can bring those back, too.

Lynne Desrochers · June 27, 2012, 01:18:14 PM

Thanks everyone. We do not use roaming profiles. What kept happening is it would log in as TEMP, even though I was choosing workgroup\stat025, odd? I called for help eventually and they couldn't fix it.
This annoyed me, and I went to try what Charlie said and chickened out. I ended up going to microsoft.com and got instructions to fix the user account profile. (microsoft KB 947215) Basically it was editing under the profile list and making the TEMP one secondary and the original one the primary. Fun and it worked.
I learned my something new for the morning.

Jeff Golas · September 26, 2012, 03:54:40 PM

Yep in case anyone wants this for future use...

Reboot Computer

Under registry...HKLM>Software>Microsoft>Windows NT>CurrentVersion>Profilelist

Find the guid entry that mentions their profile folder.

Rename the folder (itself) back to what it should be, and make the register entry match it.

Change the "state" reg entry back to 256 (or it might be zero now under W7)

Reboot again, and have them log in. Problem fixed.

Sorry Lynn haven't been on here for a few days!