Sunday 8 September 2013


"User Profile Service service failed the logon. User profile cannot be loaded."

Once in awhile you get "The user profile service failed the logon. User profile can not be loaded" error when trying to logon into Windows. This article describes resolution when Default user account is faulty and gives links to other possible causes and resolutions. In my case the error occured when trying to logon to Windows 7 with domain user account that hadn't used that PC before.

Note. I have only experienced this issue with Windows 7 on Windows Server 2008 domain and below instructions have been tested on Windows 7 only (no difference between 32bit and 64bit versions). Same instructions might apply to Windows Vista.


Occasionally, Windows might not read your user profile correctly, such as if your antivirus software is scanning your computer while you try to log on. Before you follow the methods here, try restarting your computer and logging on with your user account again to resolve the issue. If you restart your computer and it does not resolve this issue, use the following methods to resolve this issue. 

Note You must be able to log on to an administrator account to fix your user profile or copy your data to a new account. Before you resolve the issue, log on to Windows by using another account that has administrative permissions, or restart in safe mode to log on with the built-in administrator account. For more information about how to start in safe mode, visit the following Link :

Fix the user account profile

To fix the user account profile, follow these steps: 

Important This section, method, or task contains steps that tell you how to modify the registry. However, serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Therefore, make sure that you follow these steps carefully. For added protection, back up the registry before you modify it. Then, you can restore the registry if a problem occurs. For more information about how to back up and restore the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
322756 How to back up and restore the registry in Windows How to back up and restore the registry in Windows
  1. Click Start, type regedit in the Search box, and then press ENTER.
  2. In Registry Editor, locate and then click the following registry subkey:
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList
  3. In the navigation pane, locate the folder that begins with S-1-5 (SID key) followed by a long number.
  4. Click each S-1-5 folder, locate the ProfileImagePath entry in the details pane, and then double-click to make sure that this is the user account profile that has the error.




      7. Close Registry Editor.
      8. Restart the computer.
      9. Log on again with your account.


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