Lost user account (win 10)

[Ergroilnin]

Hello,

 

so I am at the end of my wits.

 

My father-in-law's PC started to BSOD and freeze and with googling I found out that latest update automatic install was corrupted and followed the inbuilt windows "deupdate" option.

 

However when the PC has restarted, instead of logging to the made user, it automatically logged as "user" account with absolutely nothing in it. Restarting did not help as it still logs as "user".

 

The original user folder (with all data still accessible and working) somehow moved over to the second HDD, but there is no way to actually use that account and somehow I cannot even use the restoration tool because there are for some reason no earlier points to restore from before I did the "deupdate".

 

I am absolutely out of my wits and even google-fu is not really helping me. Anyone ever heard of such obscure thing happening? Also all of this is local, no network accounts etc. 

 

Am I out of luck and can now only save the actual files by manually copying them to external HDD or is there any chance of amending this?

 

Thanks for any tips.

[Bombastinator]

51 minutes ago, Ergroilnin said:

Hello,

 

so I am at the end of my wits.

 

My father-in-law's PC started to BSOD and freeze and with googling I found out that latest update automatic install was corrupted and followed the inbuilt windows "deupdate" option.

 

However when the PC has restarted, instead of logging to the made user, it automatically logged as "user" account with absolutely nothing in it. Restarting did not help as it still logs as "user".

 

The original user folder (with all data still accessible and working) somehow moved over to the second HDD, but there is no way to actually use that account and somehow I cannot even use the restoration tool because there are for some reason no earlier points to restore from before I did the "deupdate".

 

I am absolutely out of my wits and even google-fu is not really helping me. Anyone ever heard of such obscure thing happening? Also all of this is local, no network accounts etc. 

 

Am I out of luck and can now only save the actual files by manually copying them to external HDD or is there any chance of amending this?

 

Thanks for any tips.

So “switch user” doesn’t work?

[kirashi]

1 hour ago, Ergroilnin said:

Am I out of luck and can now only save the actual files by manually copying them to external HDD or is there any chance of amending this?

There may be a way to amend this, however, we'd need to know EXACTLY what was done that caused this to happen... or rather, you would just need to undo whatever was done prior to this happening. Being completely honest, if you're not sure and don't want to spend hours of your time troubleshooting, best bet is to back up all the data and live with a re-created user profile.

[TetraSky]

If the original user account's folder is still accessible, just copy the documents over from that folder to the new user account. Won't take long and be a lot faster than trying to find a solution for this.

Unless the new user account is restricted in some way and you wanted an Administrator account?

[Needfuldoer]

33 minutes ago, TetraSky said:

If the original user account's folder is still accessible, just copy the documents over from that folder to the new user account. Won't take long and be a lot faster than trying to find a solution for this.

Unless the new user account is restricted in some way and you wanted an Administrator account?

Sometimes Windows creates temporary user accounts when things get goofed up like this.

 

I'd create a fresh account in the control panel and rebuild into that instead of relying on the one that mysteriously appeared.

[Mark Kaine]

So there are no backups being made? Its a good idea to always have a backup handy, *especially* when windows auto update is enabled.

However, if there are no backups, then this

9 hours ago, Needfuldoer said:

I'd create a fresh account in the control panel and rebuild into that instead of relying on the one that mysteriously appeared.

I wouldnt trust that "mysterious" account one bit…