Using temp roaming profile in windows 7 after removing local directory

I am trying to successfully implement Windows 7 roaming profiles. I added the share on my server 2003 server in active directory, logged in on my Windows 7 computer which is joined to the domain and everything was fine. I saw in me c:\users folder that there was both a username and username.domain folder. I wanted to remove the .domain folder, so I removed both folders in the c:\users directory.

Now I log in and see that I have no profile, and I have a "temporary" profile located in c:\users\temp ! How do I get back to having a roaming profile again??

I see on my server that it created the username.V2 folder and has all of the Windows 7 folders intact, so I know my original connection worked. I also look in the profiles section and see that I have a roaming profile, but it says it is a "temp" profile and gets erased everytime I log in!

Answer

This is a common issue. If you want to remove a profile on a Windows 7 machine, never just delete their user folder under C:\users. That will guarantee you this mess.

This problem has become so common that Microsoft has created a FixIt executable that you can run to resolve the problem, found in their KB article for the issue.

Most times running the FixIt by itself will fix the problem. In the odd case it doesn't, simply delete the associated user profile from the ProfileList in the registry:

• Click Start, right-click Computer, and then click Properties.


• Click Change settings.


• In the System Properties dialog box, click the Advanced tab.


• Under User Profiles, click Settings.


• In the User Profiles dialog box, select the profile that you want to delete, click Delete, and then click OK.


• Click Start, type regedit in the Start search box, and then press ENTER.


• Locate and then expand the following registry subkey:

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

• Right-click the SID that you want to remove, and then click Delete.

To avoid this in the future, delete the user profile in the way it is described in steps 1-5 above.