The user profile service failed the logon

Was what I was greeted with this morning as I tried to log on to my windows 7 profile.

I could still log on as a guest, but it wouldn't recognise my admin password so I couldn't do any of the quick fixes like make a new account and copy the files over.

Eventually started it in safe mode & played around in the reg editor, it's scary in there.

What I needed to do was find 2 files starting in S-1-5 followed by a load of numbers and remove .bak off one. What the tutorial didn't say was that if you try to rename the file, the whole thing disappears

Anyway, copied the numbers off the file below it, changed a few values to zero and now i'm back in.

Only trouble is, I've lost all my files and pictures from the last 12 years

 

You wont have done. Now you're back in, are you in a new profile or have you rescued your old one? I'm guessing you're in a new one (otherwise all your stuff would still be there). That means there'll be another folder on your C: drive, probably under C:\Users\ where all the profiles live. If your account that you are now logged into is local administrator, then you will be able to see all the folders under there. One of them will be your old profile, and under there should be all your data.

 

Found em Just have to work out how to move em now

Cheers Clue

 

If you have enough disc space left, just copy and paste them to their new location. You can move an entire folder at the same time.

While you're at it, it would be worth taking a backup of them too. Hard disks don't last forever, and when they go, they usually go catastrophically with no warning. Do you have a DVD writer in your machine? (you almost certainly will have if its new enough to run Windows 7).

 

Can you, ooh

Not got any disks, or if I have they're packed away, but ta

 

Better still, if you have a Google account, depending on how much data we're talking about, you could upload it all to Google Drive as a backup. Keeps it safe and means even if you lose your entire machine, you still have your data.

 

Done, took 15 mins to copy them over, but they're back

 

Think it said 9 mb, theres 730 folders.

 

It will be more than that if its 12 years worth of photos. Are you sure it wasn't more like 9GB? Right click on the top level folder (the deepest single folder that contains your 730 folders) and say 'Properties'. It will tell you there. Give it a few minutes because the number starts off small, but counts up as Windows looks in all the folders.

If it is 9GB, that's 2 DVDs, or it would fit on your free Google Drive account.

 

Oh yeah, 9.71gb

I'll have a look in my google account

 

That was a close one Zigs! Perhaps it's time to invest in an external hard drive for back-up, they can be picked up for a reasonable price. I have one and certainly wouldn't risk losing all my pictures, that's the one thing you can't replace.

 

This kind of thing really bugs me with computers.
We rave about how good technology is these days, but spend most of our time wondering if the pc is going to work properly next time we turn it on or if some virus is going to infect it.

It seems stupid to me, "perfect it" or dont sell it.
Would we accept this kind of thing from any other household appliance?

What if the fridge got a virus and worked, but not properly, or you turned on the TV and it was only half working.
Sceptical old me just assumes the manufacturers like it that way.
Me I just think of it as a toy, that way you dont get let down by it too much.

 

Got most of them backed up on Photobucket Sheal, just wasn't really sure what I had on the puter, been going through them.

Thing that annoys me is how much rubbish is on the computer that i'll never use, just have a look at some of the programs next time you do a virus scan