Vista Corrupt profile

[Dellboy]

I have a user with Vista Ultimate loaded. He downloaded Microsoft updates on
Friday and now it won't let him log on as his domain\user id. The error
message is "The user profile service service failed to logon", "User profile
cannot be loaded".

Also, the local administrator account was disabled. I was able to log on as
a domain administrator and a local user no problems, just not this domain
user. I therefore assumed a corrupt local profile for the domain user.

As an administrator, I logged on and copied all the key files from his
profile to a new directory for safety. (Q1. Where is the setting to make sure
hidden and system files are not hidden?) I then deleted his profile using
control panel. It left the users\user.domain files intact. No matter what I
try I can't move them or delete them. I thought they would be deleted when
the profile was deleted.

I created a new user, it came up with the same error as above. I tried
deleting the profile and files several times but got absolutely nowhere. When
I tried to delete or move the files from the profile, it always comes up with
a message along the lines of "You need permission" to do this. I have access
rights to create the directory I was moving it to, and I copied it all
somewhere else before, so I don't know why I can't delete or move the profile
files.

Is this a Vista thing (if so, thanks bill for telling me I need permission
with no hint of how to get it, even though logged on as local or domain
administrator) or is it a virus/windows corruption?

In XP, it was easy to delete and recreate a profile, in the case in Vista it
has been anything but easy or intuitive.

Can anybody advise. I hope it's a virus, otherwise I have my doubts about
Vista.

Thanks

Phil

[Peter Jiao [MSFT]]

Hi Phil,

Thank you for posting here!

Based on my experience, these errors can occur if the following group
policy setting is configured:
Computer Configuration --> Administrative Templates --> System --> User
Profiles: "Do not logon users with temporary profiles"

The user's profile was manually deleted through the command prompt or
Windows Explorer as opposed to the supported method of deleting profiles
via Computer Properties. Manually deleting the profiles does not remove the
user's SID from the profile list in the registry.

The SID is present Windows attempts to load the profile using the
ProfileImagePath. Since the path points to a non-existent path, we cannot
load a profile.

To solve this issue you may only delete profiles using Computer Properties.
Secondly, navigate to the following location in the registry:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\WINDOWS NT\CURRENTVERSION\PROFILELIST

Locate the problem user's SID and remove it. You can then logon to the
machine and create a new profile.

Note: Please make sure that the member is not part of the Domain guest
group or Guest group

Also to the issue that you cannot delete the file from the profile. This
problem can be caused by permissions on the profile.

Point 1: Take Full Control
===============
Please take the Full Control permissions on user profile folder and
propagated this down to all files and subfolders.

Point 2: Take ownership
===============
Please take ownership of the folder and propagated this down to all files
and subfolders.

To perform the further research on this issue, please confirm if there are
some error message reports in event log when the issue occurring

I hope that the above information can be of assistance. If you have any
concerns, please feel free to let me know. I am glad to be of assistance.

Peter Jiao
Microsoft Online Support
Microsoft Global Technical Support Center

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[Dellboy]

Peter,

thanks for the swift response. I did delete the account using either
computer properties or the Users bit in Control Panel, or both (I deleted it
several times, after creating it again. I am very familiar with XP, just not
so much with Vista. The profile was deleted several times, but the files
remained under users and the problem never went away. When I created the user
anew, the same error occurred.

As for the files, I took ownership and gave myself full control, I could
still not delete them. Some error meesage about needing permission (similar
to the old access denied), but I could not figure out why. It is either some
new file attribute in Vista or a virus causing the prob. I have a test rig
and will try the same on that over the next few days, to see if I can
replicate the problem with deleting the files.

I will try the registry entry you suggested. This was a vanilla install from
Dell, nothing fancy done to it at all.

I was fairly sure I could remove the profile by hacking the registry and I
can remove the files by other means, however I wanted to see if I was making
any mistakes by using XP techniques on Vista.

[Peter Jiao [MSFT]]

Hi Phil,

Glad to hear from you.

I think you can logon the domain admin in this machine and enable local
built-in "Administrator" account for this machine. And then try to delete
the folders and files in Safe Mode with this local built-in administrator
account.

You may also delete the profile SID in Safe Mode.

I hope that the above information can be of help. If you have any concerns,
please feel free to let me know. I am glad to be of assistance.

[Peter Jiao [MSFT]]

Hi ,

I am just writing to see how everything is going. If you have any updates
or need any further assistance on this issue, please feel free to let me
know. I am glad to be of assistance.

Sincerely,

[salamandra]

HELP!!! I have the same problem with my Vista Business: AppData folder
is not readable... It appeared after the last Vista update.
I lost many work files and all mail there :(
Just created a new user (administrator), and it works, but I can't even
delete those files. CheckDisk does not work on C:\ - "the volume is in
work"... what can I do to check disk?


--
salamandra

[Mick Murphy]

You follow the prompts to schedule it to checkdisk on next reboot!