The scenario: a user has a corrupt Windows profile. We don’t want to delete the profile because it may have valuable data. We need to give the user a new one.
- Log into the PC as a different user, an administrator.
- Run
regedit. Paste the following in the registry location bar near the top:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList - And hit Enter. Then Find (Edit/Find, or Ctrl-F) the username of the user you are working on.
- In the left pane, rename the container to .OLD
- Rename the user’s folder in
C:\Usersto .OLD as well. - Log off, and log on as the user.