Accidentally deleted the Users folder on my laptop with 1 user

[ImBumi]

Heyo!

 

I'm helping out a friend who accidentally deleted their user's folder and now they can't log in. If gives me an error of "The User Profile Service service failed the sign-in. User profile cannot be loaded" when trying to log in. Restarting didn't help.

 

I thought I could skip the recovery step and just proceed with reformating since I was going to do it anyway but it's asking a recovery key ID which we don't know. This is a 2nd hand laptop they bought from another friend.

 

Been looking for options online but most involve signing in to an account.

 

Edit: There's only 1 profile on the laptop.

[xAcid9]

14 minutes ago, ImBumi said:

I thought I could skip the recovery step and just proceed with reformating since I was going to do it anyway but it's asking a recovery ID which we don't know. This is a 2nd hand laptop they bought from another friend.

What recovery ID? For Bitlocker? 

If you're planning to reformat it then just proceed to deleting all partitions and recreate it. 

[ImBumi]

17 minutes ago, xAcid9 said:

What recovery ID? For Bitlocker? 

If you're planning to reformat it then just proceed to deleting all partitions and recreate it. 

idk if it's from bitlocker, prolly not since it's asking me to login to microsoft to get the recover key ID. This is something we probably couldn't get anyway because the previous owner is not easy to reach out.

 

Tried "Reset this PC" again but it's no longer asking me. Instead it says "There was a problem resetting this PC"

[HanZie82]

1. Make USB install stick.
2. Insert stick in notebook.
3. Boot from said stick
4. Remove all partitions (essentially formatting drive, NOTE! all data will be gone!)
5. Install on chosen partition
6. Succes.

 

What part does not work?

[ImBumi]

31 minutes ago, xAcid9 said:

What recovery ID? For Bitlocker? 

If you're planning to reformat it then just proceed to deleting all partitions and recreate it. 

Yeah, it looks like it is a BitLocker recovery key - still asks this before I can go into safe mode.

18 minutes ago, HanZie82 said:

1. Make USB install stick.
2. Insert stick in notebook.
3. Boot from said stick
4. Remove all partitions (essentially formatting drive, NOTE! all data will be gone!)
5. Install on chosen partition
6. Succes.

 

What part does not work?

will try this method

[xAcid9]

Just now, ImBumi said:

eah, it looks like it is a BitLocker recovery key - still asks this before I can go into safe mode.

Yes. That's what bitlocker do. 

If there's no important file in there, just format the whole drive and do clean window installation via USB installer. Resetting won't work.