Fixing 'User Profile Service Failed The Logon' on Vista

Posted By : todd sharp Posted At : September 19, 2008 9:03 AM Posted In: Vista

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I've rescued yet another Vista installation from certain doom. A good friend of my wife asked for help yesterday after Vista decided to no longer let her logon. I did some quick Googling when I found out the actual error message and came across both a knowledge base article and a tutorial on how to fix this funky error. The fix was rather simple for a technical person, but the average user would likely have had issues since it involved modifying some registry entries. The worst thing about the issue is that there really is no explanation or patch provided to prevent the issue from happening or reoccuring. There is a 'cause' in the knowledge base article that states the issue occurs when a "user profile was manually deleted by using the command prompt or by using Windows Explorer" which my friend did not do.

Oh well - at least it's fixed. Posting here to hopefully save others from digging should they come across the same issue.

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DanaK's Gravatar I actually just ran into this one too. I recently got a new machine and bit the bullet and went Vista. I've had nothing but problem after problem :x

At first my machine wouldn't shut down, just sit on the shut down screen for hours until I 1 finger saluted. This ended up being zonealarm not being able to be shut down correctly.

Next, midway through playing a song from my windows home server, the song would stop and the network connection to the server would drop. The only way to fix it was a reboot.

I apparently have some bad luck?? heh.

Posted by: DanaK on: 9/26/08 5:46 PM

Alex's Gravatar Unfortunately the Microsoft "fix" is to delete the profile. That's not really a fix.

And the tutorial depends on having a second admin account. It doesn't help when the profile in question is the only admin account.

Posted by: Alex on: 9/27/08 2:16 PM

todd sharp's Gravatar @Dana: Yeah - sounds like you have horrible luck!

@Alex: My friends account was the only admin account and this fix worked for me.

Posted by: todd sharp on: 9/28/08 5:41 PM

RaNae's Gravatar This is exactly the problem I am having. I am the only administrator, I cant system restore, change /add/delete profiles. I am stuck. So, what is it I need to do???? TY

Posted by: RaNae on: 10/5/08 5:46 PM

bernie's Gravatar I have only 1 admin account and I'm using a Thinkpad laptop. Though the machine recognized my finger and passpord, the same error message came out. I couldn't even logon to the desktop and my laptop just stay at Welcome screen. Any means to go aorund. Please help... this's my only working laptop on which I depend entirely for my company's VPN access.

Posted by: bernie on: 10/12/08 9:47 PM

bernie's Gravatar another puzzle is that I couldn't boot into Safe Mode by pressing F8 buttion. I'm using Vista Home Premium OS...

Posted by: bernie on: 10/12/08 10:03 PM

J's Gravatar You, know, I'm having the same problem with Windows Server 2008, with any new user accounts I create. Luckily Admin is OK. Going to give it a try; hopefully the fix applies as well. Did not find a specific KBB for WS08 but we'll see!

Posted by: J on: 10/30/08 3:39 PM

jay's Gravatar i just got my laptop about a month ago and use it everyday... i went to use it this weekend and it got to the welcome screen asked for password and said user profile service service failed the logon, unable to load profile,..ahhhh help i dont wanna make things worse..but i cant get on at all..what is going on?

Posted by: jay on: 4/15/09 5:08 PM

todd sharp's Gravatar Did you try what the article I linked to above said?

Posted by: todd sharp on: 4/15/09 5:11 PM

Welton Danniel Souza's Gravatar 1 - Open the command prompt with an administrator account (run as administrator)
2 - Run regedit
3 - Examined the keys under HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\Current
User\ProfileList\ and find the key for your user id SID (Probably the one with ".bak" appended to it)
4 - Append .temp to the SID identical to the one with .bak
5 - Remove the ".bak" and change the State property under that key to 0
6 - Logoff and login with your user account.

I just had this problem and I use this procedure to put my account working again.

Posted by: Welton Danniel Souza on: 5/6/09 10:16 AM

todd sharp's Gravatar I should mention that people should perform the actions recommended here at their own risk. I am not responsible for any badness that may happen as a result of following any suggestions or tips.

Posted by: todd sharp on: 5/6/09 10:18 AM

Mike's Gravatar That fix worked although all i did was remove .bak and reset state to 0.

User was able to log in to old profile. Only needed to reconfigure outlook which was east as the account was still set for domain access.

Thanks.

Posted by: Mike on: 7/1/09 4:57 PM

PApiyankee's Gravatar My laptop had this same problem and what I did was restore everything.
1. Turn laptop off and on and after turning it on at the same time hold the key ''Alt" and tab at the key ''F10"....
2. Then wait for the windows loading.
3. Choose the first option that asks if you want to restore evrything in ur pc which will erase everything you saved atfter the first time that the laptop was used.

Posted by: PApiyankee on: 8/21/09 6:51 PM

todd sharp's Gravatar I'm not sure that is a reasonable fix for many users.

Posted by: todd sharp on: 8/21/09 7:48 PM
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