Several months ago I was victimized by the corrupt user profile problem following the installation of a monthly rollup for WIN 10 Pro v.1903 64-bit. This laptop has four user accounts, and all of them are local–one admin and three standard. It was one of the standard accounts that got clobbered.
None of the usual solutions worked. So I created a new standard user account and copied all the folders and files from the original user account into the new one. Both the “dead” user and new user showed up on the log-in screen. But I did not want to delete the “dead” account until some time passed and I was sure the new account was working alright. (Additional information: C: drive is SSD used exclusively for OS and software; D: drive is 2TB HDD for all data, docs, etc. and I had the new account just point to the same folders for data that the “dead” account used so it was unnecessary to copy any of those to a new location.)
OK. So now it’s time to update to v.2004 and I decided to delete the “dead” user account and make sure everything continues to work alright for a week or two before installing 2004. Everything continues to work fine, the “dead” user no longer appears on the log-in screen, and the update subsequently installs without a hitch.
After a few days I decide it is time to create an image of the 2004 version. But first, it occurs to me to rename the new user account back to the same name previously used for the “dead” user. That seems to work also–except. Except that now I have two user folders, one as originally named (if only temporarily) and one as renamed. Both are loaded with App Data, Favorites, etc. Only rename appears on the log-in screen, however. So I decide to check if the original (“new”) user folder is just dead weight by renaming the folder user.OLD. I sign out and sign back in again and lo and behold I get the same kind of desktop that shows up with a corrupt profile. I sign out, use the admin account to remove the .OLD from user.OLD. I sign out of the admin account and then sign in again with the renamed account and the desktop loads without any problems. I have tried rebooting, shut downs and everything else I can think of, but I still have two user folders with nearly identical information. Huh?
Now I can readily understand it if the renamed user account folder merely pointed to the folder as originally named. But, if so, why duplicate all the sub-folders? As long as it all continues to work okay I suppose I should not be concerned, but why waste the space?
Anyone else have a similar experience or any insight?
