Fixing A Corrupted User Profile (Windows 10)

Question

Hello,

I'm getting an error "We can't sign in to your account." I have tried several things:

• Restarting in safe mode as per this page, and verified my files still exist. Restarting in normal mode does not resolve the problem.
• After trying this several times I moved onto the next step, but do not have any software I'm aware of that would affect startup or any additional antivirus.
• I tried temporarily disabling Windows Defender as per the next step, which I received an "access denied" message. I don't believe this is related to antivirus because this came about trying to rename my account username for privacy purposes (which I acknowledge was a bad decision).

Ultimately I've opted to fix the corrupted profile by creating a new profile and copying the data over. I had a question on this, though: I'm not sure whether or not to use "My computer is on a domain" or "My computer is in a work group" for creating a new account to copy the files over to. For additional information, this is a mostly personal computer. The account I was messing with was local.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Hello, how are you?

My name is Paloma B., I am very happy to be able to try to help you in the best possible way.

This is an open community, whenever you need you can share the problem so that possible repairs are suggested.

I understand that you had problems with your username and need to recreate it.

Check if through the procedure below it helps you in this process.

1. Press Windows + R keys to open the "Run" window;
2. Copy and paste the command

netplwiz

and press ok;

3. Click on the "Add" option;
4. Select the option "Do not sign in to a Microsoft account";
5. Choose a name and password for this profile and then proceed;
6. After the new profile is created, go back to the "User Accounts" screen, click on your user and then on "Properties". Select the "Group Membership" tab;
7. Mark the profile as Administrator and click on Ok;
8. Login with the new account;

If necessary, copy and paste the files from the old account to the new account:

9. Press "Windows flag" key + E to open File Explorer;
10. In File Explorer, select "This Computer" in the left column;
11. Under "This Computer", select "Windows (C:)";
12. Among the presented folders, select the "Users" folder;
13. Accessing the "Users" folder, select and access the folder with the name of your old account;
14. Open the folders inside the folder with the name of your old account, and copy the files to your new account.

Important: You must OPEN THE FOLDERS in your old account and COPY THE FILES to the new account, it's no use trying to copy the folders.

After migrating your data, delete your previous user:

15. Press Windows+R keys to open the Run window, type

netplwiz

and click OK;

16. Select your previous user and click Remove.

Answer 2

Thank you for the reply; I appreciate it.

Out of curiosity, why was it important to open the folders and copy the files? I found that files seemed to copy fine when I experimented with this; for example, opening Pictures>Some personal folder and then copying that personal folder.

Also, is there a way to unmark this user as administrator once I am sure everything is cleaned up?

Answer 3

It was nothing, it's a pleasure to be able to try to help you.

The procedure for copying the files, is only if it is necessary to move the files from one user to the other before deleting it.

To remove admin privileges, go back to step 6 and unmember the admin group.

But if you don't have another admin user on your computer, I don't recommend removing it.