Big Problems with Vists User Profiles
Hello Newsgroup,
I've a question for the User Profiles in Windows Vista:
What happens:
- I log on as a user - "Test" for example
- I log off an log on as "Admininstrator", than I delete the User Profile of the user "Test" in the folder "C:\Users".
- Now I log on as "Test" again and get a message that the User Profil has not loaded yet! That TEMP profile will be deleted on log off...
Failure:
- I've no chance to delete a profile yet!
- At Windows XP we have done this hundreds of times...
- The failure has been noticed on 3 different Computers with 3 different Users
Has anybody a hint for me or has the same problem?
Thank You for help, Florian
Answers
I was able to fix this problem on my copy of Vista after deleting c:\users\username.
I had to go into the registry...
hkey_Local_machine\software\microsoft\windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList
Locate the key(S-1-5...) that had the old profile(C:\users\username) and delete it. Reboot.
Not sure if I would delete the key with the administrator profile.
Cheers,
Luc
All Replies
Why would you delete just the folder through Explorer? Is there a specific purpose?
The way to properly delete a profile in Windows 2000 through Vista is to look at the properties of your computer, Right Click "My Computer" Properties > Advanced >User Profiles > Settings, select the profile that needs to be removed and Click Delete. That removes the users folders and other related information contained in the system regarding that user account. Note that this action does not delete the user account, just the profile which is created only when a user account logs on.
- We have the same issue.
Same exact procedure:- Log in as a user (local or domain, doesn't matter)
- Log out. Log in as an admin OR access filesystem remotely.
- Delete c:\Users\username
- Log in as user again, get the following error:
As it says, there is a TEMP folder within the c:\Users directory now, which is deleted upon logoff. The Event Viewer does not provide any more details.
We delete XP user profiles automatically with a .NET service which simply deletes the user's folder within Documents and Settings after a set amount of time, and this has never caused any trouble in XP.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. - Log in as a user (local or domain, doesn't matter)
- Getting the same problem here. Delete exsisting user profiles and the when ever those persons log in again they get a TEMP profile that deletes when they log off.
Having the same issue and finding now way to resolve this yet myself.
Testing Vista Enterprise for my company and just doing some of the everyday things that crops up in troubleshooting.
Logged in under a Test Account like the others
Deleted the C:\Users\ProfileName I wanted
Logged out and back in as the user.
Get the same error message as the others have.
What is needed to correct this!
Thanks
Urlryn
I had similar problems with XP a while back...did the same thing as some of you. I figured out that the 'Default User' profile I was using was created with an account that had local admin rights and the account I was logging in with could not create the profile because it didn't have local admin. So, I created a new 'default user' profile with an account that didn't have local admin.
But, it sounds like you guys are using the original 'default user' profile. So, all I can think of is, the original account you created had local admin rights, when you deleted the user folder, logging back in with the same account and no profile to log into makes it try to create a new SID on the PC in the same location and no local admin rights. I would think that it would create a different profile folder with a '%***%.domain' extension on it...similar to XP.
So, If I were you guys, I would go into the user manager tool and delete the 'test' account and then recreate it. This should work.
- Same problem here... would be nice to resolve because doing an upgrade from Vista to XP is not as robust as it should be. Ran into an issue where we were basically forced to delete the user's profile in Vista and start over (this normally would not be an issue in XP), but for some reason Vista can't re-create the profile structure.
Can anyone shed light on this issue? - oops, i did mean xp to vista. not the other way around. :)
I was able to fix this problem on my copy of Vista after deleting c:\users\username.
I had to go into the registry...
hkey_Local_machine\software\microsoft\windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList
Locate the key(S-1-5...) that had the old profile(C:\users\username) and delete it. Reboot.
Not sure if I would delete the key with the administrator profile.
Cheers,
Luc
- you saved my profile.
Thank you. - Thanks Luc,
This method did in fact work for us - no errors upon logging in afterward.
Still one problem though - when deleting using this method, the first login afterwards takes >2 minutes...
Edit: It does not take that long after all. This deletion method works well and we plan to implement it. Thanks again. Pardon my intrusion if my answer is off base, as I understand it when you first log on to Vista you are on as a local administrator and the real administrator account is disabled. If you delete the account that you logged on with Vista is supposed to turn on the local admin account so that you can log on. This doesn't make much sense to me but that is the way it was with the one install that I have done. Quite a learning curve here since they seem to have tried to change everything that worked correctly in XP just to confuse the issue!
Ted MM
I dont know if this will help anyone, i had the same problem on vista, except i didnt need access into a server or anything, like most issues that i have encountered. How every I tried doing almost everything that i could find online, but my problem persisted. I had given up on this already and was about to format my harddrive and reinstall vista. However i decided i would try to restore a restore point to see if it would work. It didnt at first, but i had to restore my computer to before the 13th of oct, since that was when i decided to install updates, so i restored till before I did the "security" updates, and now my computers back to normal, and now i can log again without any problems. Sorry for the paragraph i just had to get that out of my chest. Like i said hope this helps someone.We have just deployed 80 + PCs with Vista Business as the OS. Our domain controllers are running Windows 2003 Server and we are experiencing the same thing more or less at random.
A user will log in fine on one day, work and logout. The next time he or she logs on they get a message that they are being logged on with a temporary profile and the original profile disappears out of the C:\Users folder. The problem is that all of thier data and settings also disappear. It takes about an hour to recreate their environment, that part that we can recreate, the rest and any data they have stored are lost.
Unlike many of the posts these disappearances don't seem to be tied to updates.
Does anyone have a solution for this?
Has Microsoft offered any support or workarounds?
My issue is that Vista has randomly deleted a profile. The message stated "user profile lost". The printers, the My Documents files, and several programs are no longer visible. I know that these still must be on the machine, but the computer re-booted with a new profile with the same name but none of the setup preserved. It now looks like it did on day one with none of the customizations or new software accessible.
I fixed my profiles this way too. Hopefully this will be fixed with the service pack release.We've had similair problems, user profiles being deleted. I thought it was linked to the group policy that deletes unused user profiles after a certain time. We had this set to 180 days but user profiles that were being used everyday were being deleted! I've now switched this setting off but I've just had a user on the phone saying he's lost his desktop etc. Took a look at the PC's logs and found;
Log Name: Application
Source: Microsoft-Windows-Search-ProfileNotify
Date: 16/11/2007 08:05:57
Event ID: 1
Task Category: None
Level: Information
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: PMPC1016.npm.ac.uk
Description:
Windows Search Service indexed data for user 'NPM\dwha' successfully removed in response to user profile deletion.Event Xml:
<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
<System>
<Provider Name="Microsoft-Windows-Search-ProfileNotify" Guid="{FC6F77DD-769A-470E-BCF9-1B6555A118BE}" EventSourceName="Windows Search Service Profile Notification" />
<EventID Qualifiers="16384">1</EventID>
<Version>0</Version>
<Level>4</Level>
<Task>0</Task>
<Opcode>0</Opcode>
<Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime="2007-11-16T08:05:57.000Z" />
<EventRecordID>3910</EventRecordID>
<Correlation />
<Execution ProcessID="0" ThreadID="0" />
<Channel>Application</Channel>
<Computer>PMPC1016.npm.ac.uk</Computer>
<Security />
</System>
<EventData>
<Data Name="User">NPM\dwha</Data>
<Binary>
</Binary>
</EventData>
</Event>So it looks like the profile has been deleted, I've now had around 6 PC's show this problem, any ideas? as this is a real issue, I had 60 Vista PC's installed within a month so I'm expecting more problems over the coming weeks!
I have the same problem - my primary User Account's settings, have been "deleted" "disappeared" so that I am being asked set up questions (set LiveCam volume etc)......
The KeyBoard, language etc all swithced to US English.
I am trialing Windows Live Care - not sure if some automatic update of Vista or Live Care triggered a reset?
My files are still showing under the Old Test account ?
Hopefully someone will have answers.
Same problem here! Same ProfileNotify event log items for 5 different users. Profiles completely gone.
I also suspect my Delete Unused Profiles GPO set at 120 days. The timeframe is about right, but some users may not have made it over the 120 day hump. -- I'm counting days since profile was created, not days since last used (they just used these accounts last week).
It is quite a coincidence that there is no information about this event anywhere on the web and now we have two organizations experiencing it on the same day.
Please post if you have any luck tracking down the problem. I'll do the same.
Jonathan, are you using the GPO that deletes unused profiles after a number of days?
Thanks,
Gordon
I opened a call with Microsoft. It's a bug!
The GPO “Delete User Profiles older than a specified number of days on system restart” is to blame. Rather than counting the number of days since last use of the profile as advertised, it counts the number of days since the profile was created! So basically, Vista is deleting every user's profile, including data, after they've been using it for 120 days (in my case)!
I'm waiting for a new patch to be made to solve this problem. I'll let you know what happens.
For those of you unfamiliar with the setting, here is a related KB article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940017
Thanks,
Gordon Martin
http://VistaVitals.blogspot.com
I got my patch from Microsoft and it works great. It is as of yet an untested patch but Microsoft tells me it will be part of SP1.
The file had a KB number of 945122 (unpublished) and apparently replaces the Profsvc.dll file.
Thanks,
Gordon Martin
- a clean, simple solution!
I did a lot of googling and yahooing to finsd a solution for this. My admin profile on my home Vista pc began failing to load two days ago. I despised the idea of editing the registry or messing with the profile files and I found one suggestion to run chkdsk. I don't remember where.
I first attempted system restore about 4 times moving progressively backwards in time until I reached the end witrhout success.
I finally ran chkdsk by:
right click on c drive in explorer, choose properties
click tools
click check now
check both of two options
click start
vista told me that chkdsk couldn't run until system restarted so I clicked ok to schedule then rebooted
it took close to an hour, but profile loaded right up afterward
cheers! Luc you are a God among fools... I can't believe ur idea (being so simple that I almost didn't even bother) actually worked! Deleting the keys and values under HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\S-1-15... like you suggested amazingly did the job.
I have an environment with XP/Vista clients using roaming profiles and on XP (NT 5.1), corrupted profiles could be restored by simply deleting the local profile %USERPROFILE%. On the next login it will pull down the roaming profile from the network and then it will synchronise as per the usual logon/logoff process. However with Vista, I tried doing the same but resulted in the error message "..you have been logged on with a temporary profile..." So what I did was
1. Login with an alternate accont with Administrator rights.
2. Delete the local copy of the corrupted user profile.
3. Delete the registry keys and values under HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\%USERSID%.
4. Reboot and log back in with the corrupted user account which took a few mins to copy the roaming profile from the network to the local drive.
I'd just like to mention also that I'm sick and tired of the fools out there that try to post solutions to probems which they don't even understand. If you have no knowledge of a known issue then don't waste your own as well as everybody's time. Listing obvious troubleshooting techniques such as "Did you try rebooting?" is really an insult to your own intelligence. Getting brownie points on forums should be banned as it encourages people to post junk. There's not a clear cut case of it in this thread but I do have one example of an absolute tool.. read my reply to the following post
Just Move... 05 Jan 2007, 12:29
- Proposed As Answer byBond, James Wednesday, April 08, 2009 10:19 AM
Just Move.. For starters, on Win2000, XP, 2003, FYI you can remove any local profile by deleting the folder through explorer. What about the user's registry hive (HKCU) do you ask? It's all contained within a file called NTUser.dat under the user's profile.
We all know how to cleanup profiles anyway. There's just an extra step required on Vista which Luc pointed out. Besides, the method you suggested will be met with the same error on Vista anyway. So next time why don't you try posting something helpful? Read the question more thoroughly and please post solution if and only if you truly have soething constructive to contribute. And please don't call me a hypocrite because I am doing this as a result of your action.
- Proposed As Answer byBond, James Wednesday, April 08, 2009 10:18 AM
- Hello,
i must have done something incredibly rare or dumb. I created a TEST user profile, to test network sharing. I then deleted this account on Manage Accounts. I saw that the folder was still in Users so I manually deleted this folder. Due to problems, i had to restore the pc (not sure if b4 or after TEST account creation).
Now i cannot create any NEW accounts, and turning on Guest account does not let me log in to them either. I get the error message
User Profle Service failed the logon.
User Profile cannot be loaded.
It seems that the profiles are not being created. I do not see the user folders in C:\USER, and i do not see the SID entries in the registry. Therefore, i have nothing to delete.
I am still able to log onto my MAIN Admin account. But i cannot create any new ones.
Please HELP! - bump!
