If you encounter a message which states "Your roaming profile could not be loaded so windows is loading a temporary profile for you. Changes made to this profile will not be saved." or similar, the following workaround may allow you to fix the problem immediately and continue working.

Note that this method can be tried to fix roaming profile problems before you reset your profile. It takes about 5-45 seconds, depending on the machine, but will not require you to restart.

Also, to make things clear, this problem is NOT part of the expected behavior of the lab machines and if you encounter this problem you should also email the student-helpdesk.

1. Click on Start -> Run.
2. Type "cmd" (without the quotes) and press enter.
3. Type "gpupdate /force" (without the quotes) and press enter.
4. Type "exit" (without the quotes) and press enter.
5. Log off. You should now be able to attempt another logon.

Note: if you get the same error message when trying to log on after performing these steps, please try resetting the local machine's windows file permissions to default, and if this still fails, reset your profile.