Updated to 1903 but 'user'.000 now created and holds all my user files

I tried everything, spend hours on the phone with MS. We would update and roll back. What finally worked was to uninstall Zune. Then the update worked without creating a problem with Outlook. MS no longer makes Zune available, but I was able to find an install on the Internet and reinstalled Zune.

Every time my Windows updates in the last year, I have to roll back to get my Oultlook to work.

Hi Arch

I am glad you have backed up your data just in case . . .

With this problem a lot of user copy their data into the temp profile and when that profile deletes itself all data is lost, that is why the best option is to create a new user profile

With that being said, form your detail, do you have applications that are hard coded to look in a specific user profile for data?

Click your Start Button, then just type netplwiz and hit Enter

How many user profiles are listed on the resulting dialog?

Thanks again Dave,

I'm very keen to get this resolved quickly!! - there's a bunch more programs with issues e.g. Outlook (I can't see any of my emails...including incoming!!). WHY, if the fix is to get the original User folder re-defaulted and re-populated, hasn't Microsoft pushed out a simple fix??? - it absolutely HAS to be simple since MS are asking users to do it manually. (many apologies to you - my frustration is directed to MS)

Anyway, back to your above reply...

In PowerShell, whoami returns:  "CorrectUsername\CorrectUsername"  --> i.e. I think things look ok here

PowerShell also defaulted to the following location: "C:\Users\CorrectUsername.000>" --> i.e. we're back to the temp ".000" as a path default

So I'm not sure what this means in regards to how best to fix this problem.

However, back to your second solution, where you say:

"Please open Windows File Explorer 

Navigate to C:\Users 

Do you see two user folders that look like yours? 

Open those folders and check inside Pictures, Documents . . . etc. and see if your files are there "

-->Yes, there are two folders that look like mine - the second(new) one has the ".000" appended, and, that second folder has all my User files. I have copied all these files elsewhere (to a non-C drive) in case this temp folder gets deleted soon. 

Can I ask if, as you then say, I create a new user profile (and copy my .000 files there) - will I then lose my old original user name and will this new name cause issues with the expected paths of some of my programs - if they're hard wired to include my old username in the path name?

Thanks Dave, really appreciate the speedy help.

I've re-started 4 times and unfortunately all my old user files are still in the .000 folder. My old(normal) folder - containing nothing but "WPR_initiated_WprApp_WPR Internal Heap Collector.etl" inside Appdata/Local/Temp - is right next to the .000 folder. You mention that I'm likely logged in as a temporary profile.  Start Manager/Users appears to show me logged in as my normal user name, though my normal Desktop user icon/link takes me straight to the new .000 folder when I double click it. Is there any other way to confirm if I'm logged in as a temp profile, or not? maybe it doesn't matter at this stage?

I appreciate the .000 folder is in scope for being deleted by the system (eventually), but, can I not simply copy all my old files in the .000 folder and drop them into my normal/non-.000 folder, after all the path to this non-.000 folder is what's required by these programs depending on it. Of course, I'm assuming my normal/old/non-.000 folder is not in scope for deletion?