Need help with corrupt user profile on Windows Vista.

I have had Vista for the longest time now and am ready to upgrade to Windows 7 before the free Windows 10 upgrade expires at the end of the month.

However, two days ago my computer will not let me log in to my user profile. It gives me the following message: "The User Profile Service failed the login". I have tried resetting my computer but it does not seem to help. I can access my computer through another profile just called Administrator but I was wondering if I can access my corrupted user profile's settings through the Administrator profile.

By that I mean, is it possible to save or access all the bookmarks that were made on the corrupt profile? I saw some articles online with suggested tips on how to possibly solve the issue but I am afraid that my user details will vanish if I proceed. I want to make sure that every setting my corrupt profile has/had can be restored or transfered to another profile.

My intention later is to buy and install Windows 7.

PS. The last thing I did before this happened was transfer 50 GB of movies over to an external HDD.

In reply to a post by HappyRockets:

By that I mean, is it possible to save or access all the bookmarks that were made on the corrupt profile?

If you mean Internet browser bookmarks, they are usually stored in a file or files within the user's home directory. If you have an account with admin rights you should be able to take ownership of the user directory and copy the files off it.

Its just a registry corruption. Its an easy fix, I've used it on many PC's with the problem. Always works.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/947215

Edited by deleted (Tue 12-Jul-16 14:40:28)

Thanks Oliver341, that's good to know. So as long as I log in with the Administrator account, I should be able to just copy the user profile settings onto a newly made profile, making it more or less identical to the corrupt file?

@Rogerfp - Thanks for the link. I will follow the instructions if I cannot solve it with Oliver341's suggestion above.

The fix is the easier way to resolve it as you will have a fully working profile as before and it only takes a few minutes. But obviously your choice.

In reply to a post by rogerfp:

The fix is the easier way to resolve it as you will have a fully working profile as before and it only takes a few minutes. But obviously your choice.

Hi roger, thanks for the response. The reason I thought it would be safer to go with the other suggestion was because the Windows guide is recommending me to save all my files. Do not have additional space for this purpose on an external drive at the moment. Are you saying that it's a really quick fix without the need to worry?

Personally I would create a new profile and copy across any data from the old profile manually.

Rogerfp's suggestion is probably worth a try first, I've never had this issue so I wasn't aware of pre-made MS solutions.

It is quick and easy
Any worries just back up the registry before starting, but I've never bothered.
Even IF you had any issues, the data can still be accessed as per previous instructions and is included at the bottom of the link I gave you. It won't be lost by the registry changes required to fix the profile issue.
Have used this on 15/20 customers PC's with same issue and has never failed.

In reply to a post by rogerfp:

It is quick and easy

Hi rogerfp. I followed your advice and it worked like a charm. I had to .bak issue and had to rename both files and updating the status field. Thanks a million

@Oliver341 - Thank you for the alternative solution. Will keep this in mind if similar issue repeats and cannot be solved by rogerfp's suggestion.

Really pleased to hear that everything is OK now.