New User Logon - New User Account is Created, But It Does not Work

Question：

I have Windows Vista Home Basic.  My computer suddenly developed a glitch regarding New User accounts and the Guest Account.  Whenever a new user has been created in User Accounts under Control Panel, or the Guest Account has been turned on, those users cannot logon.  Any attempt for these users or Guest to logon is greeted with "User Profile Service service failed the logon - User Profile cannot be loaded."  When the new user is deleted, and the command to save all files is used, no files exist to be saved. 

The problem is not a corrupted profile or SID's that need to be deleted or renamed, and so on.  The problem is that when I create a new user through User Accounts in Control Panel, no profile or anything else seems to be created along with it. The computer does absolutely nothing more than show the new user under User Accounts and on the logon screen.  The new user is not listed in the Settings under My Computer Properties; there are no documents (desktop, and so on) for the new user in Windows Explorer; there is no SID for the new user.  It seems that there is no profile or anything at all for the new user.  System Restore couldn't help, because the incident which wiped out the profiles also wiped out all of the System Restore points. There are no ".bak" files in the Registry for any user. 

 

I have the same problem with the Guest Account.  There is nothing in Explorer to indicate that a Guest profile exists. There doesn't seem to be a SID for the guest.  The Guest Account cannot be used because any attempt to logon as Guest is greeted with "User Profile Service service failed the logon - User Profile cannot be loaded."

 

So, please is there someone who can help us fix the problem of not being able to create new users effectively and to have a Guest Account. Thank you.

Answer 1：

Hello temp8127,

Thank you for posting in the Microsoft Answers Forum.  There are some differences in the way accounts function between XP and Vista.  On Windows Vista, by default the Built-in Administrator (BA) account is disabled. This helps ensure that there is not an available account with a known password which could be used on the computer for an attack.

 

Enabling the Administrator Account

The Built-in Administrator account can be enabled using the following steps:

 

1.	Login as another account with administrator permissions.
2.	Enable the Administrator account in Computer Management.
3.	Restart the computer into Safe Mode to log on.

 

The final step is needed because the administrator account is not made available for login in Normal Mode whenever there is another administrator account present and enabled.

In Windows XP, issues with damaged user profiles could be resolved by logging on as the local administrator, creating a new user, and then migrating data from the old user profile to the new profile. This is no longer an option in most cases, as the built-in administrator is disabled.

 

The alternative in Windows Vista is to boot to the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE), and use either of the following methods:

 

Use System Restore to rollback changes made to the computer. This should restore a working configuration.

If System Restore is not possible or does not resolve the issue, you can rename a user profile directory so that the user is able to log on to the computer. Then migrate data from the old, renamed user profile to the new profile created on logon.

 

Troubleshooting Vista Profiles

Logging

Events related to User Profile load and unload failures, as well as issues with the components that handle profile and registry loading are written to the following logs in Event Viewer:

 

·         Application Log

·         System log

Troubleshooting User Profile Issues

The most common user profile support issues involve registry corruption in the NTUser.dat file. When this occurs, some of the symptoms that the user may see are that they are unable to logon at all, or that they are logged onto a temporary profile.

 

Some recommended steps that you can perform are listed below

 

Test in Safe Mode	This can determine if the problem relates to a startup application configured only in the user profile.
Test with an alternate user	If you are able to logon with an alternate user account, this can indicate a problem with the user profile of the original user. In such cases, the quickest path to recovery is by using the steps in this article:   KB 811151 - How to copy data from a corrupted user profile to a new profile

 

Creating a New User Profile

In the event of an issue loading the user profile for a user account on the computer, you may need to create a new user profile that will map to that user account. When that is done, you can then copy data from the damaged profile to the newly created profile.

 

To do this, use the following steps:

 

1.	Make sure that the problem user is logged off.
2.	Log on as an administrator.
3.	Go into the \Users folder and rename the directory containing the problem user profile. Rename it to "<username>.old"
4.	Create a new folder in \Users that matches the previous name of the user profile folder, for example: <username>
5.	Open System Properties, Advanced System Settings and access the User Profile Settings.
6.	Locate the damaged profile name and verify that the profile shows as 0 KB in size in this interface. This zero size is due to the fact that the directory has been renamed.   Note: Do not continue if the directory shows up with a size greater than zero. That could indicate that you may be deleting a profile folder that contains data.
7.	When done, log on as the problem user and verify that a new user profile has been created in a folder matching the username, stored in \Users.
8.	When done, you can then copy data files from the \Users\<username>.old folder to the folders in <username>.

 

 

Note: Do not copy the following files:

·         Ntuser.dat

·         Ntuser.dat.log

·         Ntuser.ini

Additional Details

The steps for creating a new folder and using System Properties above accomplish the task of deleting a registry key for the user profile. It is this key which must be removed in order to have a new profile created with the original username. You can bypass these steps above if you wish to manipulate the registry directly. To do so, after renaming the damaged user profile folder, start Regedit and go to the following key:

 

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList

 

Under this key you will need to find the subkey with a name matching the Security Identifier (SID) of the user with the damaged profile. Export and delete that subkey.

 

When done, log on as the problem user to create a new profile, and then recover data from the old profile.

 

Modifying REGISTRY settings incorrectly can cause serious problems that may prevent your computer from booting properly. Microsoft cannot guarantee that any problems resulting from the configuring of REGISTRY settings can be solved. Modifications of these settings are at your own risk

 

I hope this information is helpful.  Let us know if this solves your account issues.

 

Thanks,

Jack

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Jack



Answer 2：

Thank you, Jack, for your response.  Unfortunately, enabling the built-in administrator account did nothing to fix the problem; also the instructions you outlined could not be implemented on the particular computer (Windows Vista Home Basic). 

 

(1)  There was nothing under Computer Management, nor in MMC, that gave the opportunity to enable the built-in administrator account.  However, I did successfully enable the built-in administrator account using the Command prompt in Accessories.

 

(2) After it was enabled, the built-in Administrator account immediately appeared on the Login Screen, in Normal Mode, along with the pre-existing administrator accounts.  Nevertheless, I did restart the computer in Safe Mode to try to fix the problem. 

 

So, using the new built-in Administrator account, I turned on the Guest Account, and I created several new user accounts with various different account types, some with passwords, some without, and so on. I created some while in Safe Mode and others while in Normal Mode (same with turning on the Guest account). 

 

However, none of the new user accounts, nor the Guest account, would work.  Their names showed up on the Login Screen and in User Accounts in Control Panel, but that was all. 

 

(1)  It was not possible to login under any of the new users, or the Guest account.  "User Profile Service service failed the logon - User Profile cannot be loaded."

 

(2)  The new user names did not appear in User Profiles under System Properties.  

 

(3)  The new user names and the Guest account name did not show up in Windows Explorer: c:/Users/.  There didn't seem to be any Profile Directories anywhere for the new users or Guest account. (When the new users were subsequently deleted in User Accounts under Control Panel, the command to keep their files yielded no files.)

 

(4)  After running "regedit.exe," there were no SID's for the new users or for the Guest account, in ProfileList (they existed only for the pre-existing user accounts and the new built-in Administrator account).  There are no ".bak" files for any user in ProfileList.

Thank you.

Answer 3：

Hi temp8127,

Thanks for posting to the Vista Answers Forum.

You might try un-hiding the hidden files to see if they are present, but hidden for protection.

Open a folder and do the following:
Click Organize, and then click Folder and Search Options. In the Folder Options dialog box, click the View tab, and then under Hidden files and folders, click Show hidden files and folders.

I suggest retrying Jack's direction to see if the files are now visible.

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Chris