The full language of the error is: "You have been logged on with a temporary profile. You cannot access your files and files created in this profile will be deleted when you log off. To fix this, log off and try logging on later. Please see the event log for details or contact your system administrator."
The helpdesk staffer asked me to "delete or correct their AD profiles." What? I am certainly not deleting a user's Active Directory account. I took the ticket, determined to demonstrate to the helpdesk that the problem was with these two computers and had nothing to do with Active Directory.
Sadly, that was not the case, oops!
My expectation was that the Default User profile on these computers was damaged, so new profiles were not being generated successfully. I disproved that theory when I logged onto the system for the first time. It generated a local profile for me without error or issue. Hmmm.
At this point, I indeed had to go into Active Directory Users and Computers and I examined the two user accounts in question. A little review, and the problem quickly came to light.
Somehow, some info had been typed into the "Profile path" field. We don't use roaming profiles, so this field should be left empty/default. I typically copy user accounts (to preserve a number of account settings like group memberships for a similar job title), so I had copied this problem around to these two new users. I also found this problem on the source user account.
By deleting the text from the Profile path field, the users confirmed their next logons were without issue. They managed to create local profiles without error.
A simple problem, but it stumped me for a few moments, so it seemed worth sharing.
