Since I have had to do this a few times now, I thought I would whip up a blog on the quick and easy way to fix this issue. The problem is when a user logs into a domain machine with Windows 7 and gets the error “The User Profile Service failed the logon. User profile cannot be loaded”.

-Log into the machine with local or domain administration rights

-Go to the registry location: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList

-Look through the list of SID folders and you will find 2 that have the ProfileImagePath on the right pane listing the location of the user that has the error. One will look normal, the other one will have a .bak at the end of it.

-Rename the SID folder  that has .bak at the end of it to .bac

-Rename the SID folder that has the .bak at the end of it to have nothing at the end of it

-Rename the SID folder that has the .bac to .bak

(We are effectively swapping the 2 SID folders so that the other one has the .bak at the end of it)

-Click on both SID folders, double click RefCount in the right pane  and change the Value Data to 0 (zero) then OK out of that screen

Close registry editor and reboot