Windows 7: C:\Users Junction to other Disc, cannot login anymore

As I didnt want any User specific Data on my System Drive, after installing Windows 7 back then I was looking to move the Users Folder to a different Drive.

I thought symlinks would be perfect for the task and so I copied C:\Users over to E:\Users, deleted C:\Users and made C:\Users a Junction to E:\Users.

Everything seemed to be working perfectly until today when I was reverting the System to a Restore Point created a few hours ago.

Now after the reboot everything seems to be gone and Hell is open... When I tried to login with my Account I use for daily Operation it said "Preparing Desktop" at which Point I knew something terrible happened. As I had already guessed I had an empty default Desktop and all my Stuff, Settings and so on was not there. Additionally a Popup appeared notifing me that I was using a temporary Profile.
So I tried to login using the built in Administrator Account, but that too was a temporary Account as the Balloon Tip showed me. I quickly checked E:\Users\ and everything is still there its just not getting loaded for some weird reason.

My Question now is what the hell went wrong all the sudden and more importantly how do I manage to login to my regular Profile again with everything back in its place?

Welcome to Windows Seven Forums.

I would imagine that you've broken the symbolic link between between the legacy My Documents folder and the Users folder.

To be honest, I haven't a clue how you're going to get back to square one without a re-install of Windows 7 so I'm hoping someone else will have some ideas.

Hello, can you undo the restore you did?

Try System Restore to go back before you changed it, but I doubt that's going to help. I think you'll be needing to reinstall Windows.

I think the OP tried a system restore and that's when the sh** hit the fan.

Looks like a Windows re-install is the only way out.

(Provided this is anything like when I turned up a temp profile, a couple times...)

Whoah whoah whoah, NO. You don't have to reinstall Windows. Your profile stuff is still there somewhere. It's just no longer properly directed to where your user folder is. Can you navigate to E:\Users & confirm that it is still there? A system restore shouldn't have deleted actual files.

Here's the tutorial for the time being: User Profile - Change Default Location
You should probably run through that and re-setup your symlinks. Again, I believe your files must still be on E:\.
Also might be helpful: http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/13...y-profile.html (User Profile Error Logged Temp Profile.)

Did you try re-creating the symlinks?

Firstly thanks for all the replies so far
No, unfortunately I could not.

Yes the system restore actually started the problems...

According to dir /a the symlinks are pointing to the correct locations where all the stuff is still there.

First good news I heard all day
And yes all the Files are still there and intact on E:\Users\myuser as I already stated in the first post. However windows cannot or does not load them. Curious thing is that newly created User Accounts are NOT temporary and working as supposed to just any already existing ones wont load and are temporary.

Yes, I did delete C:\Users and recreated it. No change...


In the meantime I tried and finding more information on the net upon them the links posted by Miranova and deleted the Registry Key for the already existing Accounts in Safe Mode logging into the User I deleted the Key for... (one by one of course)
That (and prolly the previous recreation of the symlink) somewhat worked as the Profiles are no longer temporary BUT all the Windows Settings are gone (like Desktop Backgrounds, Icon Setup, Pinned Taskbar Items etc.) So I thought I would copy over the previous (old & broken) Profile over the newly created one that was working. I did this in Safe Mode again just to be sure nothing would be in use.

even though I was using the built in Administrator Account to do this I ran into a Permission Problem on some files inside AppData (about 10 randomly named .TMP Files)... I just skipped them.
When I logged back in the Account afterwards Desktop Background, Desktop Icons were back however the Icon Width, Spacing etc. Settings are still gone as are Pinned Taskbar Icons, aswell as the Startmenu last used applications. Application's Settings are gone aswell (Outlook Mail Accounts as an example). When I repinned the Applications the Pinned Icons on the Taskbar when hovered have (2) appended to the Applications name and the Links to said Applications appear twice inside the QuickLaunch Folder, so Windows is obviously not just using the Links inside that Folder but using a list from somewhere which Links to display on the Taskbar.

Since there is no way of telling how many Applications are affected by this kind of "memory loss" I would prefer to get all the Settings back aswell if there is some way. I had thought Registry is stored in the ntuser.dat File(s) inside the profile directory which I copied over, but apparently it was not enough :/

I would appriciate any ideas you might have to get those Settings back aswell.

Sorry for the long post btw.

I'm unsure whether this wil help, but you may try it.

Doesnt appear to have anything to do with it.
As I said all my files are there, just Settings & Application Configurations are missing (partially at least)