'Fixing' a corrupt User Profile

Here's another one for memory banks... Fixing a corrupt profile in Windows Vista, 7 or 10. Sadly this happens far too often and I am often called upon to help people back on their computer or laptop AND to help retrieve their data that's seemingly 'locked in' to the corrupt profile.

This article is really useful and the basis of this post. Just remember - the only way to "fix" this isn't really to fix it but to create a new profile on the errant computer, copy the data files from the corrupt profile to the new one, and then hide the corrupt profile from the login. It is a bit crap, well a LOT crap actually IMO, but I have never had success by trying to restore the system or registry.

So, suck it up, and go right ahead and create that new profile.

In order to do this you're going to need to be able to log on to the computer as an Administrator of some kind. But the Admin account that came with that lovely branded laptop is hidden, right?! Yeah, it usually is.
 
Boot into safe mode, click Start, type 'cmd', then right-click Command Prompt and select 'Run as Administrator'. In the command prompt type:

Net user administrator /active:yes

Hit Enter and you should see a message that says, "The command completed successfully". 

Exit the command prompt and re-boot. When the login screen appears you should see the newly un-hidden Administrator account. Log in as Administrator - there shouldn't be a password (hint: you may want to set one at some point, but for goodness sake DO NOT FORGET IT!)

After you've logged in you can go right ahead and create the new account (Control Panel, User Account and Family Safety, User Accounts, Manage another account, Create another account). Remember that this new user account needs to have a different username to the username on the corrupt profile (seems obvious, but there are some dumb people out there). Make the new account an Administrator.

Log off and then log on as the new user (or switch account if you prefer) to create the new user's folders on the local drive, then log off and log on as the Administrator again (or switch...)

Now you can go ahead and copy the data from the corrupt profile to the new profile. Copy the data files from the corrupt profile (C:\Users\CorruptProfileUserName) to the new profile. Don't forget to enable 'Show hidden files, folders and drives' in Windows Explorer first though else you won't get far. Remember: DO NOT COPY Ntuser.dat, Ntuser.dat.log, Ntuser.ini from the corrupt profile or you'll be back where you started.

There you go. You can log off and then log on as the new user and set-up your desktop and so on just how you like it. Don't forget some housekeeping though ...

Hide the Administrator account with

Net user administrator /active:no

on the command line, and delete or disable the corrupt profile (after you're sure you have everything you need from it!!)