How to Fix "You've been signed in with a temporary profile" Error in Windows 8 and 8.1

A user profile is a collection of settings that make the computer look and work the way you want it to for a user account. It contains the account's settings for desktop backgrounds, screen savers, pointer preferences, sound settings, and other features. User profiles ensure that your personal preferences are used whenever you sign in to Windows.

How to read event log details for User Profile Service error:

• Open Event Viewer (eventvwr.msc), then expand open Windows Logs and Application in the left pane.
• Right click or press and hold on Application in left pane, click on Find, type 1511 (for Event ID), and click/tap on Find Next.
• Close the Find dialog, and view details. Repeat to view any other listed 1511 Event IDs if needed.

EXAMPLE: "You've been signed in with a temporary profile" Notification Message

Here's How:

1. If you have another administrator account that is not affected by this user profile error, then sign out of the affected account (ex: Brink), and sign in to the other administrator account. 

   Note

If you do not have another administrator account to sign in to, then you could do one of the following options below to enable the built-in Administrator account to sign in to, and continue on to step 2below.

A) If the affected account is an administrator, then enable the built-in Administrator account, sign out, and sign in to Administrator.

OR

B) Boot into safe mode, enable the built-in Administrator, sign out, and sign in to Administrator.

2. Back up anything that you do not want to lose in the C:\Users\(user-name) profile folder (ex: Brink) of the affected user account to another location. When finished, delete the C:\Users\(user-name) folder.

3. Press the  + R keys to open the Run dialog, type regedit, and click/tap on OK.

4. If prompted by UAC, then click/tap on Yes.

5. In Registry Editor, navigate to the location below. (see screenshot below)

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

6. In the left pane under ProfileList, click on a SID key (S-1-5-21....long number). (see screenshot above)
NOTE: Usually, it will be for the SID key that has .bak at the end of the long number.

A) In the right pane of the SID key, look at the ProfileImagePath value to see if it is for the same user account name (ex: Brink) that has the user profile error.

B) If not, then repeat step 6 until your find it, then go to step 7 below.

7. Right click or press and hold on the SID key (ex: ...-1006.bak) found in step 6, and click/tap on Delete. (see screenshot below step 5)

8. Click/tap on Yes to confirm. (see screenshot below)

9. If there is another SID key (ex: ...-1006 at end) with the exact same long number from step 6 for the same user account (ex: Brink) without .bak at the end of it, then repeat step 7 and 8 above for it as well.

10. When finished, close Registry Editor.

11. See if you are now able to sign in to the user account (ex: Brink) from step 1 without getting the "You've been signed in with a temporary profile" error.

12. If successful, the affected account's (ex: Brink) user profile will be recreated and no longer receives the error. You can then copy any files you want back from the back up created at step 2.