Fix temporary profile login Error

After a recent windows 10 upgrade, Getting Temporary profile login Error “you’ve been signed in with a temporary profile”. Due to this error, you have lost all Data from the Desktop? Whenever you face this Temporary login error you may notice it will take a long time to log in to the user profile. And Any changes you make to this temporary profile will not be saved hence loading a fresh profile each time you log in. Here in this post we discuss How To Fix Temporary Profile Login error on Windows 10/ 8.1 and 7.

What is User Profile

A user profile holds user settings and preferences like desktop backgrounds, sound settings, screensavers, login screen, color schemes, and several other such settings. And the User profiles ensure that your personal preferences are used whenever you sign in to Windows. It is stored in the user’s C: Users<user name> profile folder.

This means whenever you log on to your Windows profile, all your profile’s information and settings are picked up from some registry entries and configuration files saved on your C: Users<user name> profile folder. And Corruption of a single file can unable the windows from accessing it and it will log you on to a temporary profile with showing a message like,

You’ve been signed in with a temporary profile.

You can’t access your files, and files created in this profile will be deleted when you sign out. To fix this, sign out and try signing in later. Please see the event log for more details or contact your system administrator.”

Windows 10 temporary profile after update

The pop-up notification message “You’ve been signed in with a temporary profile” means that the operating system was unable to correctly load your profile. The profile is most likely damaged. This error can occur if somebody deleted data from the profile, Tried to rename the path to the profile, windows system files get corrupted, And Also most common one is the system is infected with Virus malware. Whatever the reason behind this, here we have different solutions apply to get rid of this temporary profile login problem.

Note: We strongly recommend create a system restore point or backup important data before performing the following steps below.

Correct The user profile on Windows Registry editor

This is the best tweak I found to fix and get rid of the Temporary Profile Login error on Windows 10, 8.1, and 7 PC. This thick we are going to remove the Corrupted User profile path and set the old previous working user profile path on Windows Registry. So that windows can find the Right user profile path to load at startup. Lets Start.

First of all, you need to find the SID (Security Identifier) of your user account. SID is actually experiencing the temporary profile issue and displaying the notification.

To find out the SID for your user account,

  • Search for cmd, Right-click on the command prompt and select run as administrator,
  • Next, type the command below and hit the enter key to get the SID. ( Note: Replace username with your current username ).

wmic useraccount where name=<‘user name’>get sid  

command to get SID

As Result, you will get the S-1-5-21-823386128-2039157886-1947843478-1001 Note for your cause the SID will be different

Windows 10 temp profile registry fix

After finding the SID, close the Command Prompt. Now we begin to fix the registry settings.

Press the Windows + R key type Regedit and press enter to open the Windows registry editor.

First backup the registry database and navigate to the following path

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList.

Here look at your user account SID, you will find 2 registry keys with the same SID number one is normal and another is .bak .

Click on that SID key (without .bak), you’ll see the “ProfileImagePath” entry in the right pane that points to a temporary profile.

windows 10 temp profile registry fix

  • Double-click the ProfileImagePath entry to edit the value data.
  • Type the correct profile path and click OK.
  • If you don’t know the correct profile location, open Windows Explorer browses to C: Drive Users open your user account folder and copy the profile path.

copy the profile path

  • Now on registry Window point ProfileImagePath Double Click on it.
  • Here change the profile path on the value date field to C:\Users\your user account name as shown below.
  • Next, right-click on your old SID key that is made as .bak, and then click on Delete.

delete bkp profile path

That’s it, Log off or restart your computer. Windows will sign in to your account with a local profile instead of a temporary profile. And you will no longer receive the temporary profile error.

Run SFC utility

This Is the Best working solution to fix the Temporary Profile Login error on Windows 10, 8.1, and Windows 7 users. You can also run the System File Checker utility, in Windows that allows users to scan for corruptions in Windows system files and restore corrupted files.

system file checker utility Windows 10

Enable administrator account

Still need help, Let’s create a new user account with administrative rights and check.

  • Press Windows key + R to open the RUN box
  • Type control userpasswords2 and press OK
  • Under the User Account window and under the Users tab, click Add tab
  • Under How will this person sign-in windows, click the option at the bottom Sign in without a Microsoft account (not recommended)
  • On the next window click Local Account at the bottom
  • Choose a user name (use password if you want to or you can leave the password section blank as it is just to test)
  • Click Next and then click Finish

Add administrator user account

  • As you click Finish, the previous User Accounts window remains on the screen
  • Select the newly created user and click Properties
  • Click the Group Membership tab
  • Click to select Administrator and click Other and select Administrator from the drop-down menu
  • Click Apply and then click OK

change account type

Now log off from the current user account and log in with the newly created user account. Check if this helps fix the problem.

The Last And very useful tip performs a System Restore, This will revert back the system to a previous working state. Where the system and user profile work without any corruption Error.

Also read:

Steve Ballmer
With over 7 years of experience in the IT industry, I have experience in IT support, helpdesk, sysadmin, network admin, and cloud computing. Certified in Microsoft Technologies (MCTS and MCSA) and also Cisco Certified Professional in Routing and Switching.