Fix: Temporary or Local roaming profile message after Windows login

  Researching how to solve a “You have been logged on with a temporary profile” message on a system set up to use a roaming profile (and after I had first checked/fixed the filesystem for errors which is the classic cause for that when using local profiles) I came across this article:

http://www.grouppolicy.biz/2011/07/how-to-reset-a-roaming-profile-in-windows-7

Near the end of the article they mentioned a registry trick from

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/5ec0b949-effa-4e30-ba09-dc948a4c7a8b/windows-7-starting-with-a-temporary-profile?forum=w7itprogeneral

So I tried just the registry trick without even logging into an other admin account (it was an admin account that had the problem, although I know people suggest to avoid roaming for those), that is I renamed the account’s profile key under HKLM\Windows NT\Current Version\ProfileList with an appended .bak extension (instead of backing it up externally and then deleting it) and then did log off and log on again.

To find the correct child key to rename, just check each one there and see which one has the ProfileImagePath value for the profile you’re interested in. If for the login you’re using a Microsoft account instead of a local or ActiveDirectory based one and you’re not sure which name it uses underneath, then you can type the text %userprofile% at Search on the taskbar and press ENTER to see which folder path it opens.

  All was then fine on that machine, but then the rest of the computers that were fine before started complaining that due to some problem with loading the roaming profile they loaded a local copy of it instead.

The fix I devised for that issue was to log into those computers with the problematic account, rename the key for the profile again there (adding the .bak extension), log off and log on again, then rename the key back to normal and log off and log on again. That stopped the complaining (simple log off/log on without that renaming wouldn’t fix it).

Guess what that did was to not load the roaming profile, but keep referencing it while using the local copy instead and the log off after the renaming of the key to correct value again uploaded the correct profile (from the local copy) to the server.

Note that to open regedit and restore that key’s name after logging in the 2nd time (start menu and taskbar’s search wasn’t working anymore) I had to use CTRL+SHIFT+ESC (was on a remote desktop session) and at the task manager select to see more details, then use its File/Run… menu and give regedit as the command to execute.

  Btw, I’ve also seen the Reprofiler tool being mentioned, probably it can copy the roaming profile over a local copy or vice-versa if needed – https://iwrconsultancy.co.uk/reprofiler – https://sourceforge.net/projects/reprofiler/ without having to resort to registry hacks to trick the respective service into copying in the direction one wants.