Isolate the error or issue in Windows troubleshooting

Question

Hello,

My question is how do I isolate whether issue exists in user account or in local user profile or in roaming user profile or in local machine while troubleshooting? Is there any Microsoft official or simple isolation technique to pinpoint the exact issue category?

Let me rephrase the exact situation. Suppose other user login to the machine and issue does not appear. It means there could be issues either in original user account or original user profile on that specific machine. Now my question is how do I figure out whether issue is related to user profile or user account on that machine?

Another situation is how do I isolate local machine related issue irrespective of user account and user profile?

Kindly answer specific to above mentioned queries with troubleshooting flow diagram and Microsoft support article and docs.

Answer 1

Now my question is how do I figure out whether issue is related to user profile or user account on that machine?

The simplest method if you suspect profile corruption you can logon with another account that has local administrative rights. after saving off docs, etc. from corrupt/abandoned profiles use Control Panel|Users and Passwords and delete the old profile stores. Then when you next logon a new profile is created from an image in \default user then you can copy your saved data back to new profile.

--please don't forget to Accept as answer if the reply is helpful--

Answer 2

@G-ONE
Hi,

To determine whether a user account has a damaged user profile, you could create a new user account, give it the same rights and group memberships or associations as the account that has the profile that you suspect may be damaged.

You could refer to the following Microsoft support article:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-client/user-profiles-and-logon/create-new-user-profile

If you think it has something to do with corrupted system files, you could use the System File Checker tool to repair missing or corrupted system files
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/929833/use-the-system-file-checker-tool-to-repair-missing-or-corrupted-system

You can troubleshoot according to the symptoms of the problem
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/client-management/windows-10-support-solutions

Hope above information can help you.

============================================

If the Answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and upvote it.
Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.