What to Do When "User Profile Cannot Be Loaded" (Windows 7)

If you received the error message, "The User Profile Service service failed the logon. User profile cannot be loaded," when logging onto your profile you should first try to log in to another profile using a different username and password or connect the PC to the domain it was originally configured on (with an ethernet cable) and log on using any account from that domain.

If you are able to log in with another username, the problem only occurs on a specific profile. If you are an administrator and computer-savy, the following procedure will solve the issue:

Restart the PC to release the problem profile

Logon as administrator or another account with Administrative access

• Sign into another Windows account.
• Run the registry editor.
• Navigate to HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList.
• Look at the sub-keys here in the form of S-1-5-21-XXXXXXXXXX-XXXXXXXXXX-XXXXXXXXXX-XXXX.
• One of them is probably duplicated with the extension ".bak."  Remove (or backup) the one without the .bak, and then rename the remaining one, removing the .bak extension.
• Log out and try to log in as your troublesome user.  Should be fixed now!

Restart and the old profile should load. If it does not logon again as administrator and check the desktop, if  there are too many files (not shortcuts) move them to c:\users\documents and restart again.