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Question

Help: Temp account upon login - Windows 8

Nov 24, 2013 10:30PM PST

I have a problem with Windows 8. This morning when I went to check my ASUS Zenbook laptop, the PC wouldn't access the network, even tho I could see our home network was working. I did a hard reboot and returned several minutes later to find I had been logged in under a temp password and all the desktop files I had were in the trashcan. Here's the error message that popped up in the lower right of the task bar:

"You've been signed in with a temp profile. You can't access your files, and files created in this profile will be deleted when you sign out. To fix this, sign out and try signing in later. Please see the event log for details or contact your system admin."

When I try logging out and then back in, I get the same problem. One other note: During the login procedure, this text appears in the bottom right of the screen:

"Windows Update. Your PC will restart in 2 days to finish installing important updates."

Any help you could offer would be greatly appreciated!

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Re: temp account
Nov 24, 2013 10:45PM PST

This generally means your old account is corrupted in some way. The usual work-around: make a new one, copy your files to it and delete the old one.

Does the event log show any relevant details when you looked in it, as invited by the error message?

Kees

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Thx Kees, but where can I find the event log?
Nov 25, 2013 1:12AM PST

I couldn't find it after a quick search.

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Re: event viewer
Nov 25, 2013 3:58PM PST
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Answer
Your account files have been corrupted
Nov 24, 2013 11:00PM PST

Probably as a result of the hard boot, your user account has gotten corrupted. If you have another account with admin authority, you can recreate it. If not you can try System Restore to a time prior to the problem. If that doesn't work, I hope you have a system backup. If not, you'll need to restore to factory settings.
The message about installing updates is unrelated. It means there've been Windows updates downloaded that require a reboot to finish installation.
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Good luck.