Have you lost your session profile since the last time you logged in on your Windows PC (meaning login with your user account and your settings and/or files vanished)?
There might be multiple causes for that, such as you logged into a temporary profile or you joined the PC to a domain. (If this happened because your profile is corrupted or broken, this procedure won’t unfortunately work.)
If you browse the following directory “C:\Users”, you may see your “username” (which should be your original profile folder) and a new one “username.COMPUTERNAME”.
Follow these steps in order to re-map your old profile to the new user account.
1. Open the Command Prompt and enter the following command :
whoami /user
The output will look like this :
USER INFORMATION ---------------- User Name SID ===================== ============================================== computername\username S-1-5-21-1480730631-1291856442-3549883699-1000
WARNING : The following step imply editing the Windows Registry, manipulate with extreme caution and it is recommended to take a backup (registry backup, restore point or full computer backup) prior such manipulation. If this procedure does not specially fit your case or a mistake is made, you might end up with a non-working session or computer.
2. Open the Registry Editor by doing “Windows + R” or simply entering the command in the Command Prompt :
regedit.exe
3. Browse to the following registry folder :
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList
4. Look under “ProfileList”, you should observe folders with SIDs, your current should be there along with the old profile SID.
5. Click on your current SID and open the key “ProfileImagePath”. The “Value data” should currently be “C:\Users\username.COMPUTERNAME”.
Change it to “C:\Users\username” and click OK.
6. Restart your computer and you should login to your old profile.