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Corrupt Windows profile v2

Fixed issue where it wouldn’t log in saying “the user profile service failed the logon” and “user profile cannot be loaded”. Going in through safe mode loaded a default account.

Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList

There is one line for each profile. If a profile is bad, check:

  1. That the key name doesn’t end in “.bak” (remove .bak if there). If one of the same name exists without .bak, just name that one .old, then remove .bak from the other. Make sure they are identical in that case.
  2. That the RefCount value is 0 (change it if different)
  3. That the State value is 0 (change if different)

Make any necessary changes, close Regedit and try to log in as that user

If the above doesn’t work and you CAN’T get the normal user to log back in because of it, do the following.

  • Log in as the administrator (not the user with corruption)
  • Back up all your files first outside the C:\Users folder somewhere just to be safe.
  • Right click on Computer and go to Properties
  • Click Change Settings by the computer name
  • Go to the Advanced tab
  • Under User Profiles, click Settings
  • Remove the user profiles that are corrupted. Be sure not to remove the administrator. This will also delete the temporary profiles under C:\Users to make sure that is backed up.
  • Go back into regedit and under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList
  • Delete the profiles associated with the corrupted one completely. One of the entries should be the profile location which will tell you C:\Users\TEMP and C:\Users\JohnSmith for example if you can’t tell which is which.
  • Log out and back in as the corrupted user, and their profile should load empty and be usable.
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