I recently got hit with what I thought at first was a catastrophe ...

Windows Update installed the dreaded 1809 update / patch to Windows 10, rebooted, logged back in, and suddenly ALL of my personalizations were GONE; my wallpaper was reset, my taskbar shortcuts all gone, my desktop icons were reset, losing any that I had moved there myself, quick access links gone ... ALL of it.

Turns out that the fix is (THANK GOD) extremely simple .... just reboot!

That's it! All you have to do is reboot. You may have to reboot several times before your stuff all comes back. I've had it happen twice now on the same computer. The first time I only needed to reboot once, the second, I thought I was screwed; after 3-4 reboots it still wasn't back to normal ... but the 5th was the magic number, and I was all good again.

What happens is, during this update Windows logs you in with a temporary user profile; after rebooting into it, it'll look in almost every other way like you're in your normal user account; it'll show your normal user name, use your normal password to login, show you as an Administrator even if your user account has that permission, but you're really still 'not yourself' ... you're in a temp account, and your screwed up personalized settings prove it. Rebooting eventually will automatically remove that temp account and load up your regular account again.

NOTE: This is a specific issue relating to just the symptoms I mentioned above; there is also an even nastier bug (to phrase it lightly) that actually does delete a lot of your stuff. This won't fix that. I've read the way to tell if you've been hit with that bug is to open your Documents folder; if all your stuff that was there is gone, you've been hit. Best thing to do there is stop immediately, and run some Undelete software to recover as much as you can.

The way to tell if you're logged into a temporary profile:

Start Menu -> Settings Button -> Accounts -> Sync Your Settings

If you see a message like the above screenshot that says "You are logged on with a temporary profile. Roaming options are currently unavailable", you've been hit with this bug. Just reboot to computer however many times it takes until you see your normal stuff on the desktop.

Important note:
If you worked on anything while you were logged into the temp account (i.e. edited any text files, etc.) save them to a different drive before rebooting, or you might lose them after the reboot.

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