How to fix a corrupt user profile in Windows
Corrupt user profiles are a frustratingly common problem with Windows and
there are various problems and solutions depending on the exact error
message you receive. Here we show you how to recover from a corrupt user
profile by either fixing the problem or creating a new account and
transferring your user data across to the new profile.
When you type your password and press Enter, you will typically see the
error message “The User Profile Service failed the logon” and “The user
profile cannot be loaded”, and you’ll be returned to the logon screen.
WARNING: Some people have lost files by using Method 1
below, so create a backup of your hard disk, or just files you cannot
afford to lose before trying anything which involves editing the Windows
Registry. There are various programs which will allow you to make a
copy of your entire disk, but you will need a second disk with
sufficient capacity, and may even need a second PC or laptop in order to
copy the disk (if you can't boot into Windows). You should also make a
backup of the Registry itself from Safe Mode before you start. These
instructions are provided as a last resort, and we recommend you try
Method 2 - below - before trying Method 1.
Method 1: Fix a corrupt profile
Microsoft says that a user profile can become corrupted if your
antivirus software is scanning your PC while you try to log on, but it
could also be caused by other things.
A quick fix can be to restart your PC, but if this doesn’t work
you’ll need to restart again and boot into Safe mode. Do this by
pressing F8 before you see the Windows loading screen and choosing Safe
Mode from the menu that appears.
Safe Mode logs you into the built-in Windows administrator account, but you might find that some options don’t work.
Step 1. To fix the user profile, click Start and type regedit into the search box and press Enter.
Step 2. Registry Editor will launch and you need to navigate to the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList
Step 3. Click each S-1-5 folder and double-click the ProfileImagePath
entry to find out which user account it relates to. (If your folder
name ends with .bak or .ba follow Microsoft's instructions to rename them.)
If you can't see any file extensions at all, follow our instructions to display Windows file extensions.
Step 4. Once you have located the folder for the corrupt profile (and it
doesn’t have a .bak ending), double-click RefCount and change the Value
data to 0 and click Ok.
Step 5. Now double-click on State and make sure the Value data is again 0 and click Ok.
Step 6. Close regedit and restart your PC. You should now be able to log into your account.
Method 2. Create a new user profile
If you have a second account on your PC which you can log in to, you
may be able to use this account to follow the steps below to create a
new user account.
However, if there is no other account, boot into Safe Mode (as
described above) and try to follow the steps. If that still doesn’t
work, you need to enable the hidden admin account. To do this, type cmd
in the search box and then right-click on Command Prompt in the list of
results and choose Run as administrator.
Now type the following at the prompt:
net user administrator /active:yes
The response should be: The command completed successfully.
Now reboot your PC and you should see an Administrator account as well
as your corrupt account. Log into the admin account (there’s no
password) and follow the steps below:
Step 1. Open Control Panel and click User Accounts and Family Safety (or similar). Click on User Accounts.
Step 3. Click Create a new account and type the name. This must be different from the account which is corrupt, but you can rename the account later on if you want to have the same name as before.
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