Patch Lady – so about that profile issue

So an AskWoody reader has (or rather had) a problem in upgrading from 1809 to 1903.  Every time it attempted the upgrade she ended up with all of her personal data in a folder ending up in .003.  I *think* what was going on was during the feature release update process, the temp copying  was moving files, somehow got interrupted in the process  and was failing to move her files back to the proper location – or as I put it in a tech lingo… her Windows 10 was coughing up a fur ball.  While attempting to investigate/troubleshoot the issue I opened up a support case.  (more on that later in this post).  She ended up going to the “update now” site, which, in my personal experience, tends to work better with cats and furballs.  (My little acer works the best with that process).  Also I recommended that she disable/or uninstall any third party antivirus or anti-ransomware product that might be slowing the machine down.  So far that seems to have done the trick.

Now for the support call.  The folks at Microsoft assumed that her problem stemmed from the recent issue where the February updates for Windows 10 kept causing a temp profile.  They gave her their “script” or “playbook” that they are giving to folks for this issue.

Given that the resolution is very vague this tells me they still don’t know the root cause for the temp profile problem.  Also interesting that they include recommendations to disable Microsoft’s own antivirus as one of the troubleshooting steps.

“I disussed the case with my tech lead and confirmed this to be a bug – 25270101.

As​ there is no estimated time mentioned yet to fix this bug and devepoer’s team is still working on it.

Once they will be able to find a fix, another patch will be released to fix this issue.

For now we have this workaround to fix the issue. You can refer the link mentioned below:-

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4027881/windows-10-we-cant-sign-in-to-your-account

Also I request you to please report it via Feedback Hub App. You can use following link to open it.

https://www.bing.com/search?q=temporary+profile

“As discussed with you on call, please find the below troubleshooting steps:

 

If you try to sign in to Windows 10 and receive the error message, “We can’t sign in to your account” or you see an Action Center notification saying “You’ve been signed in with a temporary profile,” Windows will create a temporary profile and sign you in to that one. (Note: Any settings or new files created within that temporary profile will be removed after logging out, so it is important to attempt to resolve this issue, either by rebooting, or with the below additional steps.) Here are some things to try to get signed back into your Windows profile:

 

1)      Before doing anything, use an external drive to save any work you’ve done since your last successful sign in. Any files you have created or changed while in the temporary profile will be lost when you sign off.

 

2)      Restart your device in safe mode and sign in with your original profile. Check to see if your settings and files are restored.

 

3)      Restart your device in normal mode and sign in again with your original profile. Check to see if your settings and files are restored. (You might need to restart your device more than once.)

 

4)      If multiple restarts don’t help, try temporarily disabling your antivirus software or any other app that might scan your device during sign-in. (Note: Some antivirus products may have additional components which affect the system and may only be disabled after complete removal and system reboot.)

 

5)      If you continue to experience issues logging in with your original profile, disable Windows Defender services: Open the Services app by typing services in the search bar and selecting it from the list of results. Then, find the Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection and Microsoft Defender Antivirus services, right-click each of them, select Properties, and change Startup Type to Disabled, selecting OK after each change. Restart your device in normal mode and attempt to sign in with your original profile. (Note: After troubleshooting and resolving the issue, remember to set the Windows Defender services back to Automatic.)

 

6)      If you still can’t sign in, try creating a new local administrator account, log in to that new account, then follow the steps in Fix a corrupted user profile to copy your personal data from the old profile into the newly created one.

 

7)      If you still can’t sign in to your profile after these steps, we’d like to know. Please provide feedback using the Feedback Hub app on Windows 10 so that we can investigate the issue. (Feedback Hub is a public forum. Don’t include personal information in your comments.). You can refer following link to open it.

 

https://www.bing.com/search?q=temporary+profile

All of this is recapped in https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4027881/windows-10-we-cant-sign-in-to-your-account

The moral of this story?  We still don’t have a root cause for this temporary profile issue.  I personally have not hit this issue.  Have you?  We’ve seen a fair amount of “defender only” people hit this as well.  Normally it’s a race condition caused by antivirus software holding a file open while the system boots.  Often a reboot will fix it up.  Were you impacted?