Windows Easy Transfer Error

When you start the Windows Easy Transfer tool in Windows 7, the error "You’re currently logged on using a temporary profile" may pop up and the utility may quit.

This happens if one of the user accounts (not necessarily the current user account) in the system is logged on with a temporary profile. Any customizations that you make in the temporarily profile are lost after you log off the system. When Windows loads a temporary profile for an account, the following notification is shown and a corresponding event is recorded in the Windows Event Log.

Your user profile was not loaded correctly! You have been logged on with a temporary profile.

Windows Easy Transfer takes that into consideration and acts prudently by informing the user about the temporary profile, and not proceeding further. To resolve the problem, you must first fix the user account affected by this problem. Create a System Restore point and then follow these steps:
1. Logon to an administrative user account other than the user account that is experiencing the problem.
2. Click Start, type Regedit.exe and press {ENTER}
3. Navigate to the following branch and expand it:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows NT \ CurrentVersion \ ProfileList

4. From the File menu, click Export and backup the branch to a .REG file.
5. Then, locate the SID that contains ".bak" suffix. (e.g. S-1-5-21-508115838-3306226147-1483886728-501.bak)

6. Note down the "ProfileImagePath" value data for the SID with ".bak" suffix.
7. Right-click on the SID with ".bak" suffix, and click Delete
8. Exit the Registry Editor
9. Open the following folder location using Windows Explorer

C:\Users

10. Right-click on the affected user profile folder (as noted in Step 6), click Rename. Assign "-old" suffix to the profile folder. For example, if the user profile folder is "Guest", rename it to "Guest-old"

11. Login to the affected user account ("Guest" account in this case) and then log off. This regenerates a new "Guest" folder under the Users directory.
** You don’t need the following step if there isn’t any useful data left in the old user account **. I wouldn’t care much about my "Guest" profile since no critical data is stored in there.
12. Logon to an administrator account and then copy your user data from the old profile. (i.e. Copy data from "Guest-old" to "Guest") leaving out the user registry files. You have more detailed instructions at Copy User Data from a Corrupted User Profile. [Caveat: Since you're leaving out the user registry, per-user desktop customizations from the old profile is not carried on to the new profile]
You should be able to run Windows Easy Transfer utility successfully now.