How to fix 'You have been logged in with a temporary profile' errors in Windows 10 (February 2020 update)
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How to fix 'You have been logged in with a temporary profile' errors in Windows 10 (February 2020 update):
- Boot into Safe Mode by clicking 'Restart' while holding the Shift key on the login screen.
- Reboot back out of Safe Mode. Your PC should start normally and restore your user profile.
Applies to Windows 10 1903, Windows 10 19H2
Windows 10 users have lost access to their user profiles after installing the February 2020 cumulative update, KB4532693. Released on February 11, what should have been a routine quality update has reportedly caused data loss for some and missing profiles for many others.
After installing KB4532693, you may see a 'You have been logged in with a temporary profile' message after reaching the desktop. Your desktop will be empty, your user profile files missing and your customised Windows settings reset to defaults.
Microsoft's response to this issue has once again left much to be desired. Despite confirming the symptoms to several media outlets, it has not updated the 'Known issues' on KB4532693's support page; neither has it pulled it from distribution. This means you may want to consider pausing updates on your device if you haven't already received it.
Microsoft finally provided a workaround in a forum post late last week. It said it is 'aware' that some users may get logged into a temporary profile after taking the update. According to that post, booting once into Safe Mode should then result in everything returning to normal.
You can carry this out with the following steps:
1. On the Windows 10 login screen, click the Power icon in the bottom-right, then press 'Restart' while holding the Shift key (follow our separate guide to entering Safe Mode if this doesn't work).
2. Once Safe Mode starts, use the Start Menu to restart your PC again. This time, Windows will reboot back into normal mode and your user profile should be restored.
The root cause of this problem appears to be down to the way in which KB4532693 makes changes to the system. The installer appears to create a temporary user profile while it's applying the updates. In some circumstances, that temporary profile doesn't get removed once the installation finishes, so you end up getting logged into it instead of your account.
Unfortunately, much remains unknown about the exact circumstances in which the bug occurs. Microsoft even admitted as much in its latest set of instructions. It requested feedback on the steps provided as 'it helps Microsoft in identifying the root cause.' That strongly implies that engineering teams are still investigating the problem, two weeks after the update was first released.
There's a distinct possibility that the steps above won't work for you. Even if they do, you may still find there is data missing from your profile. Should that be the case, use File Explorer to visit the 'C:Users' directory.
Look for a folder with the name of your profile (for Microsoft accounts, it's the first two characters from each of your name and surname, joined by an underscore) suffixed with a '.bak' or '.000' extension. If it exists, this appears to be a backup of your user profile directory taken before KB4532693 installed.
You should be able to copy the contents of this directory back into your regular user profile folder (without the '.bak' extension) to restore your files. Alternatively, there are some reports that simply uninstalling the update might put everything back to normal.
User reports online suggest that even this may be insufficient in some cases. There are a number of credible reports that your user profile folder may be missing altogether after KB4532693, with no backup directory available. Once again, the circumstances in which this data loss occurs remain unclear. The most straightforward solution in this instance may be to restore from a backup if available.
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Microsoft's approach to this incident has done little to reinforce user confidence in the company. Far from being a straightforward quality update, this month's cumulative release has cost some users several hours of their time, while a minority few seem to have suffered data loss.
Microsoft has yet again taken a piecemeal approach to acknowledging and resolving the problem, with fragments of information posted across multiple support forums and media outlets. It comes after the equally flawed KB4524244 release for Windows Server, which was pulled from distribution after it left some machines unbootable.
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A few weeks ago during the Q&A session after his lecture for MIT's online biology class about the pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci shared his expert opinion on when things might return to 'normal' in the US. Here was my paraphrased tweet about it:
With a very effective vaccine ready in Nov/Dec, distributed widely, and if lots of people take it (i.e. the best case scenario), the earliest we could return to 'normal life' in the world is the end of 2021.
At the New Yorker Festival earlier in the week, Michael Specter asked him about a return to normalcy and Fauci elaborated a bit more on this timeline (starts ~10:22 in the video).
When are we gonna get back to something that closely resembles, or is in fact, normal as we knew it?
We're already making doses, tens and hundreds of millions of doses to be ready, first at least, in graded numbers at the end of the year in November/December. By the time we get to April, we likely will have doses to be able to vaccinate anybody who needs to be vaccinated. But logistically by the time you get everybody vaccinated, it likely will not be until the third or even the beginning of the fourth quarter of 2021.
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So let's say we get a 70% effective vaccine, which I hope we will get, but only 60% of the people get vaccinated. There are going to be a lot of vulnerable people out there, which means that the vaccine will greatly help us to pull back a bit on the restrictions that we have now to maintain good public health, but it's not going to eliminate things like mask wearing and avoiding crowds and things like that.
So I think we can approach normality, but I don't think we're going to be back to normal until the end of 2021. We may do better than that; I hope so but I don't think so.
Leaving aside what 'normal' might mean and who it actually applies to,1 there's some good news and bad news in there. The good news is, they're already producing doses of the vaccine to be ready if and when the phase 3 trials are successful. Ramping up production before the trials conclude isn't usually done because it's a waste of money if the trials fail, but these vaccines are so critical to saving lives that they're spending that money to save time. That's great news.
The bad news is that we're not even halfway through the pandemic in the best case scenario. We're going to be wearing masks in public for at least another year (and probably longer than that). Large gatherings of people (especially indoors) will continue to be problematic — you know: movie theaters, concerts, clubs, bars, restaurants, schools, and churches — and folks staying within small pods of trusted folks will likely be the safest course of action.
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A change in national leadership in both the executive branch and Senate could change the outlook for the better. We could get some normalcy back even without a vaccine through measures like a national mask mandate/distribution, a real national testing & tracing effort, taking aerosol transmission seriously, and easing the economic pressure to 'open back up' prematurely. We're never going to do as well as Vietnam or Taiwan, but I'd settle for Greece or Norway.
Update:In an interview posted yesterday, Johns Hopkins epidemiologist Dr. Caitlin Rivers gives her best guess at a return to normalcy:
Topol: When do you think we'll see pre-COVID life restored?
Rivers: I wish I knew. I'm thinking toward the end of 2021. It's really hard to say with any certainty. We should all be mentally prepared to have quite a bit ahead of us.
It's America. If we know anything by now about this country, it's that access to healthcare and economic opportunity is going to apply unevenly to the people who live here. For instance, it's likely that Black & brown communities, which have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic, may face difficulty in getting access to vaccines compared to wealthier, predominantly white communities.↩
