How to fix “Windows cannot find the local profile” error

Was your work interrupted by “Windows cannot find the located profile and is loading you on with a temporary profile? Changes you make to this profile will be lost when you log off” (or similar to it) error message? Wonder how to fix it? This article will show you two solutions to the problem – a manual one and an automatic. Use this step-by-step tutorial to fix the “Windows cannot find the local profile” error.

Fast Automatic Solution:

Causes of the problem

The Windows cannot find the local profile error may occur due to different reasons like corrupted local profiles, adequate privileges to the profile folders missing etc.

Symptoms

Besides the pop-up error message, the error manifests itself in disappearance of certain files and icons from your desktop, loss of some information, settings and programs from your PC.

Possible solutions

Manual Solution

Solution 1

1. First add the corrupted account to the “Domain Admins” groups.
2. Then restart your PC in Safe Mode. (Press F8 during the restarting process and using the arrow keys choose SAFE MODE in Windows Advanced Options Menu)
3. Now log in as Domain Administrator and delete the temporary profile
4. Then log off Domain Administrator
5. And log on as the service account
6. After completing the above steps reboot your PC
7. Finally remove the service account from Domain Admins group.

Solution 2

1. Click Start button > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools and then right-click on Command Prompt and select “Run as administrator“. (or just Go Start > Run) Type in “sfc /scannow” without the quotes and hit Enter.
2. Create a new administrator account or shift to another administrator user.
3. Go My Computer > Local disk C > Documents and Settings.
4. Back up the corrupted profile before deleting it and all the temporary profiles manually.
5. Click Start > Run and type “regedit” in the opened Command Prompt.
6. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList and find profileList subkey.
7. Delete the SID.bak key.
8. Reboot your PC

Automatic Solution

For an easy and efficient solution see the Windows Cannot Find Fix Wizard tool. The tool was designed to deal with all kinds of Windows Cannot Find errors including Windows cannot find the local profile. Using the software does not require any special skills. And what’s more, if the software for any reason does not solve the problem, there is a free 24-hour support.
If you want also to learn how to fix “Windows cannot find javaw.exe” error, then you are welcome to read this article.

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Material provided by: Alexey Abalmasov Google