Windows user account profile HELP!

[Steamy Tom]

Hi All,

I have a crisis and really need some help!

I have a laptop that I was trying to be clever on, essentially it has 2 drives, C and D

The user profiles were saved on the D drive, I had a dead brain idea and did the following:

- Created a new local administrator account
- signed into the new account
- copied the origional user data folders to the C drive (but not the new user data folder)
- updated the registry settings to point to the new location in 4 places
- ProfileList->Default
- ProfileList->ProfilesDirectory
- ProfileList->Public
- under the specific profile -> ProfileImagePath

Restarted windows, signed into the origional user account and everything seemed mostly ok like expected.

I then signed out of the user and tried to sign into that new user account created earlier, the profile cant load and i get an error on the logon screen.

My issue is I cant seem to select the origional account now to login and in any way attempt to fix anything, im stuck in a loop.

Advice if anyone has please?

thank you!

 

[10:10]

Not sure if this will help.

 

[Dylan_G]

Hi All,

I have a crisis and really need some help!

I have a laptop that I was trying to be clever on, essentially it has 2 drives, C and D

The user profiles were saved on the D drive, I had a dead brain idea and did the following:

- Created a new local administrator account
- signed into the new account
- copied the origional user data folders to the C drive (but not the new user data folder)
- updated the registry settings to point to the new location in 4 places
- ProfileList->Default
- ProfileList->ProfilesDirectory
- ProfileList->Public
- under the specific profile -> ProfileImagePath

Restarted windows, signed into the origional user account and everything seemed mostly ok like expected.

I then signed out of the user and tried to sign into that new user account created earlier, the profile cant load and i get an error on the logon screen.

My issue is I cant seem to select the origional account now to login and in any way attempt to fix anything, im stuck in a loop.

Advice if anyone has please?

thank you!

Well, I mean, you did really try hard there.

I recently did something similar (at least, I think its similar)... But I didn't touch the registry at all. Its not the neatest, but it works.

In your case, is the harddrive encrypted? Can you still get into the files if you use a recovery image/Linux? If not encrypted, backup files and clean install Windows. Its gonna be the happiest solution.

Winget works well for trying to install multiple programs. Maybe try and dump a list of installed programs before you wipe the drive.

 

[Moto Guzzi]

1-Is it one disk with two partions or two disk drives, if two what happend if you disconnect D-Drive-?

2-Can you start it in Safe Mode-? what happens now-?

3-Can you remove disc and view it from another computer to see about accounts created.

If you plan on reinstalling windows, you might as well try a few wild ideas as they come in.

 

[Steamy Tom]

1-Is it one disk with two partions or two disk drives, if two what happend if you disconnect D-Drive-?

2-Can you start it in Safe Mode-? what happens now-?

3-Can you remove disc and view it from another computer to see about accounts created.

If you plan on reinstalling windows, you might as well try a few wild ideas as they come in.

It's 2 drives. I will try to disconnect drive d this morning and see.

If I boot in safe mode it's a blank screen when it eventually loads

Can't remove the primary disk it's embedded

 

[Steamy Tom]

Well, I mean, you did really try hard there.

I recently did something similar (at least, I think its similar)... But I didn't touch the registry at all. Its not the neatest, but it works.

In your case, is the harddrive encrypted? Can you still get into the files if you use a recovery image/Linux? If not encrypted, backup files and clean install Windows. Its gonna be the happiest solution.

Winget works well for trying to install multiple programs. Maybe try and dump a list of installed programs before you wipe the drive.

It is not encrypted but I cannot remove the primary drive it's embbeded (connex swiftbook)

I copied the main user directories off on a separate external luckily before messing around so I think I should hopefully have all their documents, I need to check if I have their outlook file.

Biggest issue is I don't really know what software they all had or if they had anything very specific. I also don't have any of their license or account details and I thinks it's going to be difficult to get from them they aren't tech savvy.

 

[10:10]

What is it that you are trying to pull over? Is it special software with a key that you may not have? Is it an email account that you don't have the user info for? If it is just data I would just pull over the data into the new user account and call it a day. But again you know what the important parts are and I doubt you will go trough this if it was that simple. But just FYI and you probably know this but most keys get stored in the registry and you should be able to access it. As you know C:\Windows\System32\config. is encrypted and don't survive a copy over for whatever reason. if you are looking for the hashes you want to investigate HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SAM but I never had success porting over passwords.

So it comes down to your situation. I know you can get keys trough cmd but that you can easily google for steps. Best of luck I know how bad it can get.

 

[Rickster]

Copy whatever important data over and reformat.

 

[Steamy Tom]

Thanks for the replies all, I appreciate it, I managed to help the person come right and fix what was done.

booted in to safe mode eventually and managed to switch user that way back to the main user and then essentially reversed everything that was done.

 

[Moto Guzzi]

After XP was introduced, I managed to solve all my PC/Laptop problems one or other way other than re-installing it as was always the suggestion which is the quickest way if you dont have time. With XP I solved many problem uninstalling anything listed in device manager and reboot twice even the processors after upgrading a processor to faster one and every body warned me about blue screens etc if not re-installed, and I did got those errors intermittandly. So if you got time and can "zoom into the system" theres always a way out, sometimes really simple. Before XP everything was a living nightmare.