Fix “User Profile Service Failed the Sign-in” Error on Windows

If your local user profile is damaged or missing, you will not be able to sign in to your account and an error will appear on the Windows logon screen “The User Profile Service failed the sign-in. User profile cannot be loaded“.

The most common causes of failed User Profile Service sign-in are:

• Some user profile files are missing or damaged;
• User profile path in Windows registry;
• Incorrect default profile folder NTFS permissions;
• The default user profile file (NTUSER.DAT) that is used to create new users is corrupted;

In this article, we’ll look at how to fix your user profile and sign in to your Windows 10 or 11 machine.

Note. In order to fix user profile errors, you will need to log on to Windows using an existing account with local administrator permissions. If there is no such user, you can use your favorite Windows Live CD (for example, Hiren’s BootCD PE) to boot your computer, enable the built-in administrator account, and reset its password.

Check the File System and User Profile Service

After logging on to Windows, we recommend you check the following:

1. Check that you have enough free space on your system drive (at least a few GB);
2. Since the corrupted Windows user profile may be caused by the file system errors, you should scan your system drive and fix them:

   chkdsk c:\ /f /R

   When asked to schedule the disk check on the next restart, press Y and Enter.
   
   Restart the computer and let the disk check run.

   Note. This can take hours to complete, depending on the capacity of the system drive.

3. Open the services.msc console and check that the User Profile Service is running and
   configured to start automatically.
   

Fix User Profile Path in the Windows Registry

The User Profile Service checks a registry entry to determine the location of the user profile when the user sign-in. If a user profile entry in the registry points to a non-existent or invalid directory, you will not be able to log on to Windows.

1. Find out the SID of the affected user using the command:

   wmic useraccount get domain,name,sid

   For example, my username is Alpha and his SID is S-1-5….-1001.
   

2. Open the Registry Editor and go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList. All local user profiles that have logged on to this computer are stored in this reg key.
   Locate the key matching the user’s SID. In this example, you can see that there are two, and the other one has a .bak extension. This usually means that because the main profile is corrupted, Windows has had to create a temporary profile for the user;
   
3. Rename the key without the .bak and append the .old extension;
4. Then rename the key with the .bak extension and remove .bak;
   Once renamed, the keys will look like the one below.
   
5. Expand the key without the extension and confirm that the ProfileImagePath value is correct or not malformed. This value should contain the path to user’s profile directory. Check that this folder exists on your computer. Fix the path if the value points to a non-existent directory.
   Also, set the State and RefCount values to 0.
   The corrected values should look similar to the image below.
   
6. Close the registry editor, restart the computer, and log in as the affected user.

Replace the NTUSER.DAT File in the User Profile

The user’s environment settings, registry hive and system information are stored in the NTUSER.DAT file in the user profile folder. If this file is missing or corrupted, the User Profile Service cannot load a profile. In this case, you can replace the damaged NTUSER.DAT file with the template file from the User Profile template in the C:\Users\Default folder.

1. Open the PowerShell prompt as administrator and rename the existing NTUSER.DAT file in the profile directory of the affected user:

   Rename-Item C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\NTUSER.DAT NTUSER.DAT.BAK

2. Then replace the NTUSER.DAT file with the file from the C:\Users\Default directory:

   Copy-Item C:\Users\Default\NTUSER.DAT -Destination C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\NTUSER.DAT -Force

   

3. Restart the computer and try to log in as the affected user.

Reset the Default User Profile Folder Permissions

Windows can auto-correct issues with missing user profile files by copying them from the Default User Profile folder (C:\Users\Default). This folder is also the source for new user accounts. If the NTFS permissions on this folder are somehow incorrect, this could also prevent you from logging into Windows and creating new user account profiles.

Confirm that the C:\Users\Default has the following permissions.

• Owner: SYSTEM
• Everyone: Read & execute
• SYSTEM: Full Control
• Administrators: Full Control
• Users: Read & execute

You can use the File Explorer properties tab or the icacls command to view the folder permissions:

icacls C:\Users\Default\

If not, you can re-add those required permissions on the “C:\Users\Default” folder

Right-click on the Default folder, select Properties > Security > Advanced > Change Permissions > check the box “Replace all child object permission entries with inheritable permission entries from this object” > OK. This will reset the permissions on all nested files and folders.

You can check your default NTUSER.DAT health as follows:

reg load HKU\Default C:\Users\Default\NTUSER.DAT

The operation completed successfully.

reg unload HKU\Default

The operation completed successfully.

If the NTUSER.DAT in the C:\USERS\DEFAULT folder is corrupt or missing, we recommend that you manually copying health NTUSER.DAT from another computer with the same Windows build.

Create a New User Profile and Copy Data

As a last resort, you can create a new profile and copy the old data if the above methods have not helped. This method will create a new user account and profile folder. Once created, you can copy the data from the older profile to the new one.

1. Open PowerShell as admin and run the below command to create a new local user account:

   $password = Read-Host -AsSecureString
   
   $user = @{
   
   password = $password
   
   name = 'alpha2'
   
   fullname = 'Alpha 2'
   
   description = "Alpha's 2nd user profile"
   
   }
   
   New-LocalUser @user

   

2. Next, add the new account as a member of the local Administrators group:

   Add-LocalGroupMember -Group Administrators -Member alpha2

   

3. Log out as administrator and log in as the new local user account.
   The profile will be created during the first login.
   After the login is completed, the user can copy the old data from C:\Users\<OLD PROFILE> to C:\Users\<NEW PROFILE>.
   When you no longer need the old corrupted profile, you can remove it from the computer and free up some disk space.
4. Open the Advanced System Settings by running this command:

   SystemPropertiesAdvanced

5. Go to Advanced tab and click Settings under the User Profiles section.
6. Select the old profile from the list and click “Delete”.
   
7. Finally, you can remove old user account:

   Remove-LocalUser -Name <OLD USERNAME>

So, we looked at the main ways to fix the User Profile Service loading errors and successfully sign in to Windows.