No users after booting.

[scottac]

Hello. I have a bit of an issue. First, after installing Windows ten my start menu stopped working altogether. I was in the process of fixing this issue by testing a newly created profile to see if its start menu would function. I created it through powershell, then signed out of my current account to access the new one. As soon as i got to the user menu all user profiles were missing from the screen. All i can access are the Wifi, keyboard, power, and screen setting options in the bottom right. I'm not sure how to go about fixing this.

Any and all help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

 

[Trouble]

Wow.... another new one.... no accounts available to select from on the bottom left??
IDK, I think I would use the power icon on the bottom right of the sign-in screen and hold the shift key while clicking restart to boot the computer into Safe Mode or maybe Safe Mode with Networking and see if that provided any relief.

 

[scottac]

Not really what i wanted to hear but i don't need to wast anymore time on google i guess. Lol. So far after installing this its caused my computer to fall into an infinite boot loop. Killed my start menu. Killed my desktop. And now just not one profile again, but all of them. I also tried to access Safe Mode via that methode and i can't get into Safe Mode at all. It just boots as normal. And i've done that operation a few times before.

 

[Trouble]

How long have you had Windows 10 installed and running?

 

[scottac]

It was installed in late october. Problems started about a week in. First the boot loop. After i fixed that my desktops disappeared. Then one profile. I fixed all that and then my start menu and desktop options (right click) stopped working. Its not my main PC so i let it slide for a few months and surpassed it by using taskmanager to switch profiles.

 

[Trouble]

WOW.... do you have any reason to suspect a bad hard drive or maybe bad memory?
It would seem to be multiple instances of corrupt system files or something similar, so .......
Maybe run the Check Disk utility against that drive and all of its' partitions and if that checks out maybe run MemTest86+ against all your memory modules.
Something has got to be responsible for that many assorted problems.
Assuming you're not over-clocking, and you've got all your drivers (BIOS, Chipset, Storage Controllers, etc.) all up to date

 

[scottac]

Checked the memory and hardrive for issues and found none. And i'm 99% sure all updates to my drivers were current, since i checked all that the month before windows 10 was installed and these started happening. Also not Over-clocking. :/ this isnt my main PC so its not the worst thing ever. But my family does use this primarily. None of them know anything about computers so i doubt they were fidling with it. It ure is a pain in the neck though.

 

[Trouble]

You may want to attempt an in-place upgrade / repair install. Upgrading Windows 10 by installing it over top of itself.
There is a pretty good article here https://neosmart.net/wiki/windows-10-repair-installation/ just ignore the first couple paragraphs where they are promoting their repair products and scroll down to the meat of the article.

If you do not have the installation media....
The installation media can be obtain through either of these two resources.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/techbench
OR
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10
Once you have the ISO, you can use ImgBurn to burn it to a DVD or Rufus to burn it to a USB ThumbDrive, or simply mount the ISO from within Windows 10 and run setup.exe from there.
Choose upgrade and make sure the box is ticked to obtain updates as part of the upgrade process.

This is a relatively simple and straight forward task and is generally non-destructive (all your data, programs, drivers, etc., should remain intact and unharmed), but.....
Personally I would still have a backup of my critical data, as well as a disk image, so I could recover in the event of some unforeseen problem.

Failing that.....
You're pretty much left with a custom clean install

 

[scottac]

Thanks for the quick response on that. but i think i have it handled now. I had a suspicion that the user i created through powershell moments before might have something to do with my missing profiles. I found that if i restarted it enough times the old HP boot screen would flicker for a split second. It took a few tries to get the "esc" key pressed in time, but i caught it and managed to enter safe mode and remove the user. Just like that all my users came back when i booted normally

Very strange.

Anyways, i'm removing and "maybe" re-installing windows ten right away. Hopefully this is the end of my freak glitches.

Thanks for the help though

 

[Trouble]

Just glad to hear you got it sorted.
Thanks for the follow-up.
Much appreciated.