Accidently logged off and cant use computer

Question

My sister has accidentally logged off the families computer instead of selecting shut down she clicked log off and we don't have a log in and off set up. we have tried to click on the picture that comes up but it keeps coming up saying something along the lines of '"The User Profile Service failed the logon. User profile cannot be loaded." and all we can do is turn it off cant get into the computer to try log off or anything? if someone can please help or suggest something that would be great.

Answer 1

I had this with a customer recently where their daughter's laptop was giving the same problem. She had renamed the C:\Users\Username folder to be in her name, and since that point she could no longer log in.

What I had to do to fix it was to first enable the Administrator account, and then use that to repair the system.

You need to reboot the computer in "Safe Mode with Command Prompt" - press F8 as the computer is booting (just before it says "Starting Windows" - it may take a few attempts to time it right) and select it from the menu.

When you get a command prompt shown you need to type the following:

C:\> net user Administrator /ACTIVE:YES 
C:\> net user Administrator letmein

Then you can reboot and you should have a new icon for logging in - Administrator. Click that and enter the password "letmein" and you should now have access to the computer as the administrator.

You can now use this account to either fix your old account (check the profile location and things) or create a new account and copy your files over from the old one.

The latter is probably easier.

Answer 2

See this Microsoft Knowledge Base entry: Error message when you log on to a Windows Vista-based or Windows 7-based computer by using a temporary profile: "The User Profile Service failed the logon. User profile cannot be loaded"

This may be caused by your user profile having been manually deleted without removing the associated registry entry. Given that you are using temporary profiles, boot into Safe Mode, enable the Administrator account as Matt Jenkins described, and use it to make the necessary changes as given by the KB entry. After you're done, remove the password and disable the system Administrator account:

> net user Administrator /ACTIVE:NO
> net user Administrator ""

You should also have a separate password-protected administrator account, independent of the system Administrator account and accessible from the logon screen outside of Safe Mode, to recover the system from these types of problems.