How to Recreate a Corrupt Profile on Windows 7 / 8 /10
Recreating a windows profile used to be as easy as just renaming the old profile, then rebooting the PC and logging in again to create a fresh profile, but since windows 7 you have to delve into the registry and make a few changes other wise the user will get stuck with a tempory profile every time they login.
- Restart your PC to realises the locks on your profile
- Log on with another administrative account.
- Rename or Delete the users profile folder (C:\Users\%username%\)
- Delete any temp profiles that may have been created during your first attempt at recreating the profile (C:\Users\TEMP\).
- Delete or Rename the registry key matching your SID from… “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList”.
Check the value “ProfileImagePath” to make sure you pick your own profile. I like to add a ‘.bak’ to the key in the registry.
- Restart and now log in with the account you were trying to recreate.
