How-To Geek

I have a Windows 7 Professional SP1 64-bit laptop.

The problem started when I was logging in, it lead me to a temporary profile. I searched high and low for solutions and decided to follow this one (from Microsoft): http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947215
so I edited the registry as asked and it fixed the problem, but only temporarily.

A day after, I could not log in again, with "The User Profile Service failed the log on. User profile cannot be loaded. So I edited the registry again with the solution from Microsoft.

I restarted, and could log in, but I was shocked to find that even though I DID log in to my User Account (with the password), it was a different profile, with a new desktop. When I click on the "My Videos",etc. on the left side of a window, it was like a brand new account with no files. But when I go to C:\Users\User\My Videos, my files from my admin user account was all there.

I tried to download a picture and when I clicked "Open Folder Location", I saw that it was located at C:\Users\TEMP\Desktop. It seems that although I did log in with an admin account, I am currently using the TEMP account. And this TEMP account is functioning like a normal User Account (i.e. saving files) and there was no pop-up warning about not being able to save files in the temporary account.

Some important info:
When I was changing the registry (after receiving the message of User Profile Service failing) one of the folder's S-1-5....1000 ProfileImagePath was C:\Users\TEMP while the other folder's ProfileImagePath was C:\Users\User. Checking it right now, it seemed that it is still the same, the folder w/o .bak having C:\Users\TEMP while the folder with .bak having C:\Users\User. I am afraid of changing the registry again for fear of destroying the files in my user account.

I cannot do system restore because there aren't any restore points available. I also tried Last known good configuration incase something happens, but so far nothing. Should I edit the registry or is there another way of changing it back?

At this point I woud suggest you just save everything (files, photos, music) then reinstall windows.
The more you mess with the registry the more you are apt to lock yourself out.
You are going to have more profiles, desktops and user folders around that are just going to keep causing problems.
Have you tried deleting one of the user accounts you don't want or need?

One other thought, when you tried logging in again on the next day and you found your registry had another profile listed that means son=mething is writing to your registry. You might try SAS and malware
http://www.superantispyware.com/
http://www.malwarebytes.org/pr.....ebytes_pro

Had you recently being changing the file / folder permissions?