Windows 10 wipes out all my settings on every login
Suddenly my Windows 10 is doing something really weird. Every time I login I see a "Preparing Windows" message, and once I'm in, I see that all my settings are gone. By that I mean:
- Desktop picture set to the default one with the Windows logo
- Pinned taskbar shortcuts gone
- Cortana search bar appeared (I had disabled it)
- All accounts in Chrome gone
- Custom regional settings gone
- Installed keyboard layouts gone
- All applications acting like it's the first time I run them (no applications seem to have been uninstalled)
Windows 10 build number is 10.0.10586. A couple of days ago I had configured it to receive Insider builds in the slow ring, but no updates have been installed since then (that I have noticed at least).
Another weird thing is that the in the insider build configuration screen I see the message "Another administrator has set up this device to receive builds". I am the only person using this computer and there are no additional user accounts.
So, what's going on here? Thanks!
Solution 1:
I have seen this before - Windows loads an empty profile instead of the existing one (seen on Windows 7, not 10, but the OS hasn't changes that much in this aspect).
One thing that can work is removing the affected profile from the profile list in the registry:
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList
The problem profile will have two folders starting with the same GUID - one with a .bak extension and one without.
Rename the one without the .bak to something else (say add a .tmp extension), then remove the .bak from the one that has it (and which show your correct details).
Reboot and login as normally. Your settings should be back to normal.
This is described in full in this blog post.