My computer is trying to mutiny and no longer recognizes me as its master.

June 24, 2010 7:32 AM

When I went to bed last night I turned off my computer. It said it was installing some updates and I didn't really notice. When I woke up this morning I could still log in to my normal administrative user account like normal, but none of my settings are the same. This is on a laptop running Windows Vista.

It claims I am logged in under my normal name, but when I look at my user name in Explorer it comes up as C:\Users\Temp. All of my files are still there when I actually direct Explorer to the C:\User\Correct Name directory, but none of them are default anymore.

A lot of programs (like Google Chrome) aren't even showing up and several file extensions are no longer associating correctly, nor do any of my normal desktop, start menu, etc settings load like normal.

Any idea what I should do? I would really like to be spending this time watching the World Cup and not fighting against my laptop.

posted by highfidelity to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

Best answer: When you log on to Windows, Windows looks up your user account's profile folder in the registry; this should normally be C:\Users\CorrectName. If the profile folder named in the registry is missing, Windows XP just creates it and uses it. I was annoyed to find out, after deliberately deleting a user profile folder in an attempt to force Windows to build me a fresh one, that Windows 7 behaves instead as you describe.

So I'm thinking that something has stuffed up the registry value that points to your user account's profile, and that Windows is failing to find a folder named accordingly, and is logging you on with a temporary profile instead.

Safest way to fix it is probably to rename your C:\Users\CorrectName folder to C:\Users\CorrectName-Renamed so that Windows won't find other creative ways to cause you grief after you follow the instructions in KB947242 to get a fresh profile rebuilt.

Once you've got Windows back to a state when it's using C:\Users\CorrectName as the profile folder when you log on as CorrectName, restart it and log on as Administrator. Then rename C:\Users\CorrectName to C:\Users\CorrectName-Fresh, rename C:\Users\CorrectName-Renamed back to C:\Users\CorrectName, and sanity should be restored.

When you know it's all good, you can delete C:\Users\CorrectName-Fresh.
posted by flabdablet at 8:15 AM on June 24, 2010

This is an obvious question, but because you didn't mention it specifically--how many times have you restarted since the problem appeared? Some updates will keep your profile from loading properly once or twice, but a few power cycles can sort things out at least half the time.
posted by Phyltre at 9:34 AM on June 24, 2010

Yeah, I've had this happen on my laptop with XP, actually. Try restarting?
posted by limeonaire at 5:00 PM on June 24, 2010

Response by poster: Restarted and shut off about a dozen times, with no result sadly.

Flabdablet's answer got my closest, but in the end I still lost all my settings associated with the profile and end up having to spend many hours rebuilding it all and trying to remember why I defend Windows.
posted by highfidelity at 7:40 AM on June 29, 2010