You've been signed in with a temporary profile - Fix

How to Fix "You've been signed in with a temporary profile" Error in Windows 8 and 8.1


This is for when after you sign in to a user account in Windows 8, and notice that a temporary profile has been loaded instead of the profile that corresponds to the current user. Therefore, any changes that you make to the current desktop are lost after you sign out. Additionally, the notification area may display the following error message:

You've been signed in with a temporary profile.

You can't access your files, and files created in this profile will be deleted when you sign out. To fix this, sign out and try signing in later. Please see the event log for more details or contact your system administrator.

This problem usually occurs if the user profile of the account was accidentally corrupted or deleted from the system.

This tutorial will show you how to fix the "You've been signed in with a temporary profile" error a user may get after signing in to their account in Windows 8, Windows RT, Windows 8.1, and Windows RT 8.1.

This will basically delete the user profile of the user account that is getting the "You've been signed in with a temporary profile" error in order to reset and rebuild the user profile to fix this error.

A user profile is a collection of settings that make the computer look and work the way you want it to for a user account. It contains the account's settings for desktop backgrounds, screen savers, pointer preferences, sound settings, and other features. User profiles ensure that your personal preferences are used whenever you sign in to Windows.

How to read event log details for User Profile Service error:

• Open Event Viewer (eventvwr.msc), then expand open Windows Logs and Application in the left pane.
• Right click or press and hold on Application in left pane, click on Find, type 1511 (for Event ID), and click/tap on Find Next.
• Close the Find dialog, and view details. Repeat to view any other listed 1511 Event IDs if needed.

EXAMPLE: "You've been signed in with a temporary profile" Notification Message





Here's How:

1. If you have another administrator account that is not affected by this user profile error, then sign out of the affected account (ex: Brink), and sign in to the other administrator account.

   Note

If you do not have another administrator account to sign in to, then you could do one of the following options below to enable the built-in Administrator account to sign in to, and continue on to step 2 below.

A) If the affected account is an administrator, then enable the built-in Administrator account, sign out, and sign in to Administrator.

OR

B) Boot into safe mode, enable the built-in Administrator, sign out, and sign in to Administrator.

2. Press the :winkey: + R keys to open the Run dialog, type regedit, and click/tap on OK.

3. If prompted by UAC, then click/tap on Yes.

4. In Registry Editor, navigate to the location below. (see screenshot below)

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList




5. In the left pane under ProfileList, click on a SID key (S-1-5-21....long number). (see screenshot above)
NOTE: Usually, it will be for the SID key that has .bak at the end of the long number.

A) In the right pane of the SID key, look at the ProfileImagePath value to see if it is for the same user account name (ex: Brink) that has the user profile error.

B) If not, then repeat step 6 until your find it, then go to step 7 below.

6. Right click or press and hold on the SID key (ex: ...-1006.bak) found in step 6, and click/tap on Delete. (see screenshot below step 5)

7. Click/tap on Yes to confirm. (see screenshot below)



8. If there is another SID key (ex: ...-1006 at end) with the exact same long number from step 6 for the same user account (ex: Brink) without .bak at the end of it, then repeat step 7 and 8 above for it as well.



9. When finished, close Registry Editor.

10. See if you are now able to sign in to the user account (ex: Brink) from step 1 without getting the "You've been signed in with a temporary profile" error.



That's it,
Shawn

Related Tutorials

---

• How to Fix "User Profile Service service failed the sign-in. User Profile cannot be loaded." Error in Windows 8 and 8.1
• How to Reset User Profile of Built-in Administrator Account to Default in Windows
• How to Do a Repair Install of Windows 8 without Losing Anything
• How to Refresh Windows 8 and Windows 8.1
• How to Do a System Restore in Windows 8 and 8.1

 

[Dick Jagger]

Brink - somehow I thought this forum is for Windows 10 - anyway I'm using windows 10 and I see there is another long thread with the same problems on the windowsten forums!!!

So After restarting, each account says welcome for a while then back to "preparing Windows'.

I am really frustrated with this now. I have no idea what to do next. about eight hours lost today so far.

 

[Brink]

That's ok. Since this is for Windows 10, let's continue this at the tutorial below instead.

You've been signed in with a temporary profile - Fix - Windows 10 User Accounts Tutorials

 

[Pmerriles]

Hi! I just encountered this problem and I wanna try these steps but I can't completely delete the C:\Users\(user-name) profile folder. A dialog box will appear saying "You require permission from SYSTEM to make changes to this folder." And also "The folder contains items whose names are too long for the destination folder." The only folder left in there is the AppData. I am also signed in to an administrator account when doing this step. Please help me solve this problem. Thank you!!

 

[Brink]

Hello Pmerriles, and welcome to Eight Forums.

The main thing is to have the correct path of your user profile folder in the ProfileImagePath value of the SID key for the account.

 

[AWPT]

Hi! I need some help. So this happened to my girlfriend's computer three days ago. I was cleaning her computer and used Ccleaner and then Malwarebytes (which I use every week on my computer and works great) and I did all that I do normally. The problem is that when I restarted the computer, I had this problem. The temporary profile. So I've looked up online and fixed the issue. So it doesn't run as a temporary profile anymore. The problem that when it logged in as a temporary profile, all the images, documents, folders on desktop, etc, all had disappeared. Now that the user is no longer on temporary profile, the problem still persists. The background image changed to the windows 10 original and all folders and filles are gone. The one thing that it's good is that if I go to the local disk C:/Users/Carolina/Desktop, it's all there, but when I'm the work area it's not. Is there a way to get it all back as it was or should I just drag them back?

Thanks for the help.

 

[Brink]

Hello AWPT, and welcome to Eight Forums.

It sounds like Windows may have setup a new profile folder for her instead of using her original C:/Users/Carolina folder.

Double check to make sure the correct C:/Users/Carolina profile folder is set as the ProfileImagePath value for the SID key without .bak at the end for this account.

This will have Windows use the correct profile folder for the account, and hopefully have everything back.

 

[Adriel]

Ive had this problem for a week now and ive gone to the registry to fix it by removing removing "bak" from the profile that i use with all my settings.
Renaming the profile without the "bak" since its the temp file as it clearly shows in the profile path.

So ive gone and done it and its worked fine but then just the other day i logged in got the temp account message and ive gone into the registry and ive found what you normally find one with bak and the other not only this time both SID's have temp (my account name and a number) on both the same SID's so i went to do the method and change it up in the profile path for the correct one that i thought delete the one without the bak and logged off.

I sign in fine but now ive beem stuck in temp account.

Sometimes it says prepairing windows when signing in and i go to the registry and do your method to fix the bak (and btw this time the profile paths are different since this time to how it normally is in your example shown.

But i go to do the registry thing and its not worked.


My friend recomended i get an external drive copy what i need like games,important files etc etc.

Reinstall windows then copy the files back where they came from.

Then i also may go to windows 10

Please help!

 

[Brink]

Hello Adriel, and welcome to Eight Forums.

Double check to make sure that you still have the correct path for your original profile folder (ex: "C:\Users\Adriel") for the ProfileImagePath value in your account's SID key.

If you changed the location of your original profile folder before you started getting the temp profile error, then see if moving the folder back may help.

If not, then you could delete the SID key(s) for your account to have a new profile folder created for your account. However, this will have to change your settings again, and copy over any files (ex: music, documents, etc...) you wanted from the old folder to the new one.

 

[Adriel]

Alright cheers Brink.
Is there a way to contact you so i could send screenshots of the Problem?

 

[Brink]

You can post them here if you like. The tutorial below can show you how to post a screenshot.

Screenshots and Files - Upload and Post in Eight Forums

 

[Adriel]

hey brink so i got the screenshots and something else has gone wrong where i followed this guys vid today
ill link it


and also i was getting signed into a temp account again so atleast thats working like before i would change the registry and i would restart and it would instantly sign me into the account without "preparing windows"

i followed where he delete the bak with the sid too and kept the temp account and replaced the profile image path with his user instead of "temp" being its original name.

but anyway here are the screenshots




as you can see in the screenshots
my normal account has been messed around with obviously my fault but silly me following videos on youtube thinking that the problem would resolved.

 

[Brink]

Adriel,

If you still have your files (music, documents, etc...) saved somewhere, you could copy them back into you new profile folder, or create a new account for yourself to use, and delete this one after copying any files you want to the new one.

In addition, check to see if you may have a "C:\Windows.old" folder. If you do, look in it to see if you may have an old copy of your profile folder to at least be able to hopefully recover some of your files.

 

[Adriel]

alright cheers bro!
but one other thing
so you know how you have your users in the drive where you operating system is obviously well the the weird thing is and its always been like this is...

my storage for my profile e.g documents,downloads,music,videos etc etc are all stored in my main drive weird i know but thats what my mate did when he installed it for me

so my user is in my SSD also where the operating system and the storage for the profile is in my 2T hard drive.


what my friend was also considering and im edging towards it is grabbing a 1T hard drive from a local store and copy what i need such as the storage for my profile with all its documents and my games and my music producing stuff. wipe the system....reinstall windows and install windows 10 then plug my hardrive in put what i copied back and re-download all the stuff that can easily be accessible and re do how my profile was before with the setting i originally had before all this crap.



i think i may of said this before but not in more detail.
hopefully this made sense


btw back in the other post with the screenshots mybad i wasnt specific so "Adrie_000" is my profile and somtimes when it gives me the temp account message it will come up with "adrie_000AdrielsPC_000" which is very weird

ill show you in a screenshot.

and look at the users

 

[Brink]

For now, you should be able to use the full path of wherever your original profile folder is located.

 

[Adriel]

One more thing
Since this is a temp account can I play games that are already installed on my hardrive?

Like if i didn't have this problem I would play these games like normal


But since its a temp account can I play a game. for example

League of legends

This game is an online profile save

So all I do is sign in.


Will it be okay if I do so since its already installed etc

 

[Brink]

Adriel,

Sure you can, but nothing is saved for a temp profile. It's like starting with a new profile each time.

 

[shmatity]

Hi,

I have a lot of problems after applying the changes.

I cannot open the start menu at all.
When i try to create new profile the screen blinks for a second and nothing happens .
I also cannot open settings.
I'm using Windows 10.

Please help me because reinstalling is not an option >_<

 

[Brink]

Hello shmatity, and welcome to Eight Forums.

Since your issue is in Windows 10, please see the tutorial below instead.

Fix You've been signed in with a temporary profile in Windows 10 - Windows 10 User Accounts Tutorials

 

[shmatity]

Hi,

My problem is that i followed this one and I end up with the issues above.
Is there any way you can help me?

 

[Brink]

Do you have another account to sign in to do the tutorial I posted for W10?

If able, please try the tutorial I posted above instead, and I'll be happy to help there with your issue.

If you're unable to, then see if you may be able to do a system restore at boot using a restore point dated before you had these issues.

System Restore Windows 10 - Windows 10 Performance & Maintenance Tutorials