Fix Temporary Profile in Windows Vista with Registry Key

Windows Registry

If your Windows Vista computer is booting up with the temporary profile and showing the following message, “Your user profile was not loaded correctly! You have been logged on with a temporary profile. Changes you make to this profile will be lost when you log off. Please see the event log for details or contact your administrator.”, Then you need to read this guide to fix the problem. When Windows Vista loaded with temp profile, you can’t see your files, folders, and icons on the desktop. The temp profile would look like a new profile. This guide shows how to fix temporary profile in Windows Vista with the registry key modification.

The following temporary profile registry key change should be done with extra precaution, and you should know what you are doing. If you wrongly modify the registry, your Vista computer may not boot properly next time.

Steps to Fix Temporary Profile in Windows Vista with Registry Key

1) Login to Vista computer with another Administrator account or same temp login account which should have administrative access.

2) We need to remove a registry key which related to temporary profile in Vista, to do that, follow the steps.

WARNING:

Before modifying computer registry, it’s highly recommended to take a backup ( export the current registry). Also, you must do the modification carefully; wrong modification can cause booting issues.

3) Open the Start menu and in the Start Search area, type regedit and press Enter.

4) If prompted for UAC in Vista, click and continue.

5) In Windows Vista registry, go to the following attribute.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList 

6) You will find the similar set of profile keys but one with .bak at the end of it.

The key with .bak is the original correct profile, and other one is a temp profile which doesn’t have anything at the end.

7) You can rename the profile registry which doesn’t have anything at the end to something else or delete it.
confirm.jpg
8.)You need to rename the profile registry key which is having .bak at the end, just remove only the .bak from it. So, it should look like an original correct profile key.

If you want to know more about how to modify the registry key to solving temporary profile problem in Vista, check our similar guide about Windows 7.

After successfully and carefully changed the registry key, close the registry editor.

9) Log off and log in.

Your temporary profile issue on Windows Vista or Windows 7  problem would be solved by now.