Log on problem. Please advise.

[livichops]

Hi all,

Not sure if 'general discussion' is the appropriate forum for this thread but I was hoping one of you kind people could advise me...

I shut down my laptop last night and everything was working just fine. When I booted up this morning however, a message about windows update flashed up (never seen that before and it was too quick to read it properly), BEFORE I had even reached the welcome screen or log in screen. Once it reached the log in screen (my primary user that I use 90% of the time and where the majority of my files and folders are located. Both users are administrators however) it displayed this message. "the user service profile failed the log on. User profile cannot be loaded" My secondary user account was unaffected but as I needed access to my primary user account I rebooted, went into safe mode and did a system restore from the previous day. I rebooted again and the problem seemed to be fixed.

However, upon researching (goggled it) as to why this may have happened and how to prevent it reoccurring it appears that the problem has something to do with windows updates. My windows updates (as is my MS Security Essentials) is set to automatically update every day at 3.00am. For now, I have disabled windows updates from automatically installing any updates but as I like the convenience and security of automatic updates I would like to solve rather than just band-aid the issue. My google research, although suggesting that windows updates could be the problem, did not offer an adequate explanation or permanent solution.

Hope someone can help.

Thanks!

 

[Brink]

Hello Livichops,

The tutorial below should be able to help you fix this error if it should happen again. There's really not a specific reason as to why it happens since it could be caused by a number of unrelated reasons.

The User Profile Service failed the logon. User profile cannot be loaded. - Vista Forums

Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[livichops]

Hi Brink,

Thanks for the link. Well, seeing as using system restore fixed the issue I'll leave it for now. I am just concerned that it will happen again and system restore won't work next time. You know how it is with these things, and the random unpredictability that sometimes entails(for a non-tech person at least). I definitely think (in my case at least) it is related to windows updates as I read quite a few people had the same problem and after it happens once, it keeps happening. No one seems to understand the rot of the problem as yet, but I'll keep looking and if I read anything useful I'll let you know.

Thanks again for your help.

 

[Brink]

To be safe, I would recommend to keep backups of anything in that user account that you do not want to lose. Usually this error is fixable though unless there's severe corruption of the user profile.