Vista Account Problems

I am running Windows Vista Home Premium 32
(system specs: laptop 2.1 Ghz core 2 duo, 4 gb RAM, 500gb hd (about half full) nvidia 8400M GS, Avira Premium Security Suite)

I have had the computer for about a year running fine with 1 main admin account. Now when I need to create an account for another user I cannot create one, either admin or standard. When I create it, using either the control panel or command prompt, it creates the user picture, making the account visible on the control panel user accounts screen, and on logon screen. However, when trying to log into the new account I am greeted with the error "User profile service failed on logon. User profile cannot be loaded." The standard fix for this from various forums is to edit the registry key of the account. However, on going to regedit I see that no key even exists for the account. On further investigation I discover that no user files have been created either. I attempted a system restore, but discovered that all my past restore points were gone, and intruigingly, the computer had stopped createing 24 hour checkpoints. I cannot say for definite whether it was this issue or another one that caused system restore to mess up, as I don't check my system restore all that often. Either way, system restore is not an option. There have been mentions of a full Vista reinstall, though if at all possible I would like to avoid this.

If anyone has any ideas I would be grateful.

I'm curious if your C: drive is checked off under System Protection tab.

Also, have you run the latest virus and malware checks?

Typically this is a registry issue. But since you're not finding the key, I want to see if something else is afoot.

thanks for quick reply, yes computer is fully updated and I scan it regularly with avira.

On the system protection front, I have never unticked any of the drives, but, and this is strange, a new folder has appeared in the drive list, I will post a screenshot.



screenshot is a little old, as problem has been going for a while, but those restore points that it says were created on 01/09/2009 were created by me on the date this was taken, they were the only points in existence then. Now I manually create points regularly, as for some reason, even though normal C drive is ticked, it has stopped creating 24 hour checkpoints.

Okay, so your last restore point was 1/9/09. Wonder if that was when the OS was installed.

What if you select CREATE from that screen to create a new restore point? Again, this to just to see what's up with system restore.

I have NO idea what the "missing" drive is. Anyone else care to chime in?

sorry I did not make myself clear, until I came to system protection on that date, there were NO restore points at all, despite all of the drives being ticked. The OS has been installed since may 08, so its not that!!! In answer to your create question, the restore points that you see present are the ones that I manually created on that day.

I had used system restore in the intervening time so it is not a bug that was present from the start. I only noticed it on the day that screenshot was taken, though it was probably present before then.

Another thing, I have Win 7 RC installed on a virtual partition, I have not been able to create the account since before I installed it, but might it be that Windows 7 is causing a problem? (I only boot windows 7 very rarely, like once every month or so, wheras my main vista machine spends most of its time on)

Win7 would not be causing these problems. Discussion - if there was a background process running constantly, a restore point would never be created.

Time to experiment

Disable UAC and try to create an account. Lemme know how that goes.

I found someone that had the C: and C: (missing) and was successfully creating restore points, so that may not be an issue.

sorry to report a negative on your experiment, I had tried creating an account with and without UAC, both attempts produce the same result as I have already detailed

Cackles4EVA said:

sorry to report a negative on your experiment, I had tried creating an account with and without UAC, both attempts produce the same result as I have already detailed

Click to expand...

Sorry about being dense but could you go into event viewer (type event viewer in search) go to the windows log>application tab and look to see if there are errors (and there are) see if any of them are relevant to this situation. It may not look related so could you use the snipping tool (yeah in search) to make a screenshot and useing the attachment icon (shaped like a paper clip) upload a snip to us.

Thanks for your patience


Ken

this issue seems to have balloned into 2 separate issues in one thread.

In terms of the sytem restore issue: There are no regular errors that are occuring to do with system restore (as I would expect if it was trying and failing to create a daily system restore checkpoint.)

In terms of the user account problem, I will attempt to create an account now and see if any errors are logged when it fails to work (assuming it will, as all the other account creations I have tried have failed).

Will repost on here with results of the log check for the new account asap

on second thoughts I will wait, get the system restore issue sorted first on this thread, then deal with the account problem to avoid confusion. So, anyone got any other thoughts on system restore?

C

We'll be here when you need us

Ken

Thanks. I think that these problems are not connected (despite discovering them at the same time). Can We figure out system restore issue first, then address the user account one. As I said earlier, system logs show no errors that are anything to do with system restore. So what is the next step? Startup repair with Vista OS disks? Or will this wipe data?