Windows – Deleted, then added user w/ same name, now logs on w/ temp profile

active-directorywindowswindows 7windows-server-2008

I am a new admin at a high school lab and am trying to spearhead separation of normal IT accounts from IT admin accounts. I made my normal account (e.g. ITuser) and an admin account (e.g. ITuser-adm) on the server (Win Server 2008 R2). I used both accounts on my my main desktop for about a day, but decided I hadn't set up the admin account correctly. I deleted the my admin account, then made a new one with the same name.

The problem is that on my main desktop (Windows 7 Pro), whenever I log in with my admin account, it gives the following errors:

Windows has backed up this user profile. Windows will automatically try to use the backup profile the next time this user logs on. (Error 1515)

Windows cannot find the local profile and is logging you on with a temporary profile. Changes you make to this profile will be lost when you log off. (Error 1511)

This is more of a nuisance than anything for me, I just thought I could use the same name for a user account I'd just deleted since they would have separate SSIDs anyway. If it's less trouble, I could just make a new admin account. Or I could just keep using it as is since I don't need to be saving anything locally anyway and the typical folder redirects work fine.

I'm just curious and want to understand what's going on.

There are no errors listed regarding the registry.

Best Answer

This may be happening because your new account has a different SID, but the profile folder for your old account still exists. So you new account attempts to login, tried to get into the profile folder that corresponds with it's name, fails (because it's not the SID that has rights to the folder) and falls back to a temp profile.

The fix for this is to grant rights to the profile to the new SID, or completely remove the old profile and allow the new account to create a fresh one in it's place.

You can delete a profile on a server via My Computer -> Properties -> Advanced -> User Profiles.