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The User Profile Service has failed...

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by brifd1 1 view

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This is what I've been confronted by of late, and what I did. What should I have done (it's not very intuitive)?
First, I couldn't log in, getting "The user profile service failed the logon. User profile cannot be loaded."
I repaired, that didn't work. Then, I went to and was eventually able to restore an earlier session, and life was back to normal. It lasted a short while. The problem returned. This time, none of the available restore points would work. I also tried Last known configuration somewhere in here, but it didn't work.
I started up in Safe Mode. I eventually was able to create a new user profile. I thought I copied over the old user profile subfolders to the new user profile. I then deleted the old profile. I think I goofed, as none of the elements from the old profile, e.g. what was on the desktop, is not there. I thought the dialog box said merge files, but it didn't even write over the blank folders in the new profile with the filled ones in the old profile.
Fortunately, I do have a backup disk, albeit a couple of months old, so I am restoring the documents from there.
Comments? Windows 7 OS.

4 replies

by michael jay

only copy the data, not the entire profile, that will cause problems, if the old profile still exists you may still be able to recover the data.

by seanferd

Mind you, i haven't seen it happen much since Win 95, but sometimes Windows just lies to you when it says it is copying or moving files.

Also, make sure the files actually went where you wanted them to go, and not somewhere else. Do a search for a known file expected to be on the Desktop, and see if your data didn't end up somewhere else. (As administrator, search the whole /Users directory, and maybe the entire drive as well.)

by tobif

Huge amount of important data is stored under the appdata tree in the profile. (email, for instance, tend to be there somewhere.)

When copying, make sure that your computer shows hidden files and directories, since they may contain lots of useful things.

And one more thing:
Do check the HDD with some testing procedure, maybe from the HD vendor. Failing profiles can be due to different causes, but if your HDD is on the way out, then it's better to be proactive.

Oh: May I suggest you try a full backup of your HDD, before going further?

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