[Solution] Vista Always Loads with Temporary Profile for Specific User Account

[SYNACK]

Right, found a weird one that can occour when people inpropperly kill a Vista machine with multiple users logged in and have posted here for refference.

 

When it is killed impropperly it can leave a chunk of data in the registry, when this happens it attempts to use rewrite the original registry which it does not have access to do.

 

The key involved is located here:

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

and will take the form of a network SID with .bak appended to the end. When this is present it will mess up the logon process and cause the user to always logon with a temporary profile.

 

To solve this both the .bak key and the identical SID key if present.

 

You should also check the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Authentication\LogonUI\SessionData

 

under each number to make sure that the system has not held sessions for the offending user account, the best idea is to delete each of the numbered keys under here that refference the offending user which should after a reboot resolve the issue.