That error comes about in two scenarios generally.
First, if you belong to a Domain, it is implying a syncing issue, which the Domain Administrator would need to address,
Second, for the average Joe Blogg, its implying there may be corrupt files within the User Profile, or that the User Profile itself [ stored in the Registry ] is itself corrupted.
Windows is able to self-correct itself on occasion, hence the message tells you to sign-out and then sign-in again. During these steps Windows reloads the Registry ProfileList, and automatically corrects the issue. All going well, you can then sign-in as usual and carry on with your intended tasks.
Occasionally, though this does not work, and instead you get a repeat of the error message and you will probably also see a alert from the Action Center [ Notification icon in the System tray ] warning you that anything you do while logged in to a Temporary Profile will be lost when you sign-out ].
In that scenario you need to take some steps to resolve things.
Microsoft recommend enabling the
built-in Administrator [ i.e.
net user Administrator /active:yes ] then signing in to this account and running a System File check. You may need to run this more than once to resolve issues.
Upon successful completion of this check they recommend disabling the
built-in Administrator [ i.e.
net user Administrator /active:no ].
You can also do some Registry Modifications yourself. Within the Registry Editor, the ProfileList is stored at the following location:
- HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList
You can modify the affected User Profile here by
opening the
Registry Editor while signed-in to the
built-in Administrator account,
or by signing into Safe Mode as the
User receiving the error message.
- Press your Windows key + R to open the Run dialog
- In the run dialog type regedit then click OK
- If signed-in as built-in Administrator, the UAC will prompt you. Click yes
- If signed-in to Safe Mode you will not receive the UAC prompting.
- Now in the Registry Editor click inside its Address bar once to get flashing cursor next to Computer
- Now copy & paste the following in the Address bar
Code:
\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList
Press your
Enter key
Sample image
You'll now see the
ProfileList key
expanded and revealing a series of
Profile sub-keys in the
left pane.
The
sub-keys that begin
S-1-5-21 then continue with a series of numbers are the sub-keys you need to pay attention to.
Note: The first of these sub-keys will likely end with
-1000 [
Do not touch this! This is the Default User Profile that Windows uses as a template when you are creating new User accounts. ]
The next couple of sub-keys are likely to be the ones you want to take a closer look at. In the sample image above, you can see there are two identical sub-keys, with the exception that the second sub-key ends with the extension .bak
This is a classic example of what you'd expect to see in your scenario.
The
sub-key ending with the extension
.bak will be pointing to the
User profile receiving the error you described. However, the path it has recorded
may be incorrect.
If you
left-click on the
sub-key that ends with the extension
.bak to open its contents into the
right pane of the
Registry Editor, you will be able to view the
User Profile Path it is pointing to in the
Data column for the
String named
ProfileImagePath
Sample image of corrupted Profile Registry sub-key
As you can see above I've illustrated what you may see if the
ProfileImagePath has become corrupted within the Registry.
In this scenario you would do the following steps to resolve the issue:
- Right-click on the sub-key that is identically named to the problem sub-key but does not have the extension .bak and select Delete
- Next, left-click on the problematic sub-key that ends with the extension .bak again
- Now in the right-pane locate and double-left-click on ProfileImagePath to open a pop-up window
- In the pop-up window inside its Data value field modify the profile path to point correctly to your User account, then click OK
- Now right-click on the sub-key ending with the extension .bak and select Rename
- Left-click once and backspace to delete the .bak then click away from the sub-key to remove focus
Sample image of re-named sub-key
Now all you need to do is
close the
Registry Editor and
restart your computer.
Note: In some scenarios, rather than see two identical sub-keys, with the latter ending with .bak you instead will only see the sub-key with the extension .bak
In this scenario, its also likely if you take a look at its ProfileImagePath you'll discover the path is actually correct. That is an indication that there are corruptions in the Profile itself that led to the Registry key failing to load. In this scenario, you can right-click and select Delete to remove the sub-key with the .bak extension, then close the Registry Editor and restart the computer.
Windows will re-create the Profile folder, but you'll need to re-create your files yourself given some or all of the originals are corrupted.
