Actually, it's one of the things I do most, lately. Whether the user lost his password, MS Edge is not working, Store apps are not working, Windows explorer is not showing the Start screen or the notification area, or the user can not login, it always ends up with the same basic solution.
In order to minimize data loss, I usually do the following:
- Login to an admin account different from the one I'm to fix.
- Delete the bad user account while keeping the user data.
- Grant access to the old profile dir, and rename it.
- Create a new user account with the exact same name as the old one.
- Move data from the old account profile to the new one.
- %appdata%\Microsoft\Windows
- %localappdata%\Microsoft\Windows
- %localappdata%\Packages
This is a lengthy process, especially if the user has many files to move to the new account, or the machine does not have a SSD. So I thought I needed a tool to do the job for me. And that is why I created Account Profile Fixer (APF).
When we launch the application, it shows up the user list. Here we just need to select the user account we want to fix and click Fix selected user (next step).
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Then we can choose whether to keep the folders listed above or not. By default, those folders are deleted. If we want to keep them, we tick the corresponding check mark.
And finally we click Fix selected account now and confirm.
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APF will then create a temporary admin account, reboot the machine and automatically login to that account, delete the bad user account, create a new one, fix permissions and move stuff. When finished, it will reboot again, and automatically login to the repaired user account. Hopefully the problem will be solved and you only used 3 clicks and 10 seconds of your time.
I plan to add more features to this tool, namely an option to try fixing the account's permissions instead, and manage the Profile List registry keys. I hope you enjoy it as it is for now.
Download here