I’ve been getting a lot of calls recently regarding problems when logging in. When a customer logs in he gets the error “The user profile service failed to log on user profile cannot be loaded”. I noticed this problem when a certain windows update was installed on Windows Vista. I haven’t really pinpointed which update that was but there is a solution for this problem. Here are the steps to resolve this issue :
Log on with another administrator user profile or if you don’t have any other and you are the only user do the following:
1. Turn off computer
2. Turn on computer and press F8 while you see the DELL logo
3. On the Windows Advanced Options select Safe Mode
4. Open the Start Menu and type Regedit on the Start Search field
5. Go to the following entry:
a. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Profile List
6. There you will find the following information: 
7. On the “.BAK” file you will find an entry with ProfileImagePath with the name of the user
8. Delete the repeated entry that does not contain “.BAK”
9. Right click on the other entry and select Rename. Delete the extension .BAK for the original entry.
10. Exit Regedit
11. Restart computer.
Tags: corrupt user profile, registry, user profile, vista, windows update, Windows Vista
