[Windows Fix] We can’t Sign in to Your Account, You’ve been Signed in with a Temporary Profile

A few days back, I faced this problem in one of my Windows 10 machines. As soon as I tried to login using my user account and password, Windows 10 displayed this temporary user profile error message.

Today in this article, I’m going to share how to solve this issue quickly and easily without any expertise.

PROBLEM SYMPTOM:

You start your computer and enter your password at login screen (also known as sign-in screen or welcome screen). As soon as Windows lets you sign-in and loads Desktop, you notice that it has launched a brand new desktop, the same which you get after creating a new profile or installing fresh Windows. You can’t see your programs and icons on desktop, taskbar and start menu.

You also get following error message:

If you click on “Sign out” button, Windows logs off and reloads login screen. You again enter your user account password, Windows loads the desktop and again displays above mentioned error message. This loop continues and you are always treated with the annoying dialog box whenever you try to login.

If you click on “Close” button, Windows keeps running and shows following notification message:

It means everything you create, save or modify, will be deleted immediately as soon as you sign out or shut down your computer. Windows makes all changes temporary and automatically deletes all changes once the user logs off.

So basically, you are unable to sign in to your existing previous user account which you were using in past without any problem. Windows is creating a temporary profile for you and not saving any changes or documents.

PROBLEM REASON:

Most of the times, this problem occurs if you didn’t shut down your computer properly and forcefully switched it off from mains. Sometimes users forcefully restart their computer in the middle when Windows is starting and showing boot screen or login screen.

In such cases, the existing user profiles get corrupted and Windows is unable to find and load user profiles.

Sometimes the user profile references stored in Registry get corrupted or deleted, which also causes Windows to unable to launch user profile.

To overcome this issue, Windows creates a temporary user profile for troubleshooting purposes so that the user can do important work and can fix the issue.

PROBLEM SOLUTION:

Sometimes this problem can be fixed by modifying Windows Registry and correcting user profile references stored under “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList” key. But this solution is not 100% working and sometimes may cause more problems to you.

That’s why, I’m going to share the easiest solution to fix this issue which will allow you to create a new user account or profile which you can use further without any problem or error messages.

Once you create new user account, you’ll be able to sign into the new user account and start working on your documents. Windows will stop loading temporary profile.

So do as following to fix this temporary profile problem in Windows:

STEP 1:

You need to create a new user account. You can create it using several ways.

1. First method is to run following command in RUN dialog box:

It’ll launch classic User Accounts window. Click on “Add” button and you’ll be able to create a new user account.

2. You can also create a new user account using Control Panel -> User Accounts page.

3. Third method requires using Windows 10’s Settings app. Open Settings app from Start Menu or by pressing WIN+I keys together. Now go to “Accounts -> Family & other users” section.

Click on “Add someone else to this PC” option and you’ll be able to add a new user account.

STEP 2:

Once you create new user account successfully, sign in using the new user account and you’ll get a fresh new desktop with default settings without any error message.

Now you can customize everything according to your requirements.

You can also add or pin your previously installed program shortcuts to desktop or taskbar by going to following folders:

• C:\Program Files
• C:\Program Files (x86)

Under these folders, look for your 3rd party software program folder. You’ll get the main executable (exe) file under the program folder. Create a shortcut of the program and copy it to desktop or pin to taskbar or start menu.

If you want to restore your documents, etc from previous user account, you can find them in following folder:

• C:\Users

It’ll contain your previous user account folder. Open it and copy whatever you want to desktop.

If you get “Access is denied” error message while trying to open the user account folder, take ownership of the folder with the help of following tutorials:

[Tip] Add “Take Ownership” Option in Files and Folders Context Menu in Windows

[Guide] How to Take Ownership (Permission) of a File or Folder Manually in Windows?