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Windows 10: Fix “User profile cannot be loaded” Error

Windows 10: Fix “User profile cannot be loaded” Error

September 18, 2018 by Mitch Bartlett 15 Comments

There is a common error that is hitting many Microsoft Windows 10 users where they cannot login to the computer with newly created account profiles. They get an error that says “The User Profile Service failed the sign-in. User profile cannot be loaded.”

This problem commonly happens because the “NTUSER.DAT” file located in the “C:\Users\Default” folder has become corrupted. To solve this issue, you will need to replace the “NTUSER.DAT” file with one from another profile to the “Default” folder.

  1. Login to the computer using a profile/account that works.
  2. Using the file explorer, navigate to “C:\Users\Default“.
  3. Just in case things go bad, backup the “NTUSER.DAT” file by right-clicking it and selecting “Rename“.
  4. Give the “NTUSER.DAT” file a name of “NTUSER.OLD“.
  5. Back out to the Users folder. Find a profile like “Guest” or “Public” that may not have a corrupted NTUSER.DAT file, and copy it to the “Default” folder.
  6. Log out of the computer and login using the account you used when the error occurred. Hopefully all works well.

Alternately, you could copy the NTUSER.DAT file from another Windows 10 computer.

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Filed Under: Windows

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Yogesh says

    August 6, 2022 at 12:39 pm

    thanks a lot. It worked.

  2. Zach says

    April 12, 2022 at 7:14 am

    I can’t login with a user account that works because they disappeared. All that’s left is the corrupted profile.

  3. Gabriel says

    January 28, 2018 at 3:44 pm

    Thanks, it worked for me

  4. Ian McD says

    November 20, 2017 at 3:09 pm

    Brilliant, thanks! Most user profile fixes refer to correcting the SID in the registry but it’s not there if you cannot create new accounts. This did the job. Just for luck I created the new account with the wifi off as well and can now get my family’s accounts operational again.
    I suspect a failure during the migration of an account to Win10 was the original cause.

  5. Cedric says

    October 24, 2017 at 5:48 am

    it worked like a charm! I was one of those users whose laptop was upgraded from windows 8 to windows 10. I couldn’t see any user folders in c:\users nor any registry entries for other users.

    After copying a clean file from a friend it worked. The user I created now has folders & registry entry.

    Unfortunately all past guest users’ data was wiped. I didn’t know this till yesterday!!

    Thanks for this post! Amazing & way better than what Microsoft Support has documented

  6. shahiq says

    July 16, 2017 at 2:47 pm

    i didn’t understand the 5th point properly, could you explain in other way please.

  7. F.Negm says

    June 17, 2017 at 2:17 am

    u r amazing … this solution was helpful to me

  8. Zack says

    June 2, 2017 at 6:21 pm

    Having the same issue as Longfellow.Still cant solve it.

  9. Longfellow says

    May 28, 2017 at 12:17 am

    Seems that I need administrator rights to make these changes so did not work for me. Admin user is the account that does not recognise the password. Password is correct but gets the User Profile Service failed message. Looks like I will have to brave the registry changes path after all. Thank you anyway.

  10. B says

    May 2, 2017 at 2:39 pm

    Worked exactly as advertised. Thx!

  11. Mike says

    April 29, 2017 at 12:21 pm

    Mitch,

    You are my HERO! I had given up months ago trying to fix this problem and was resolved to sharing an user profile with my wife. With renewed hope, I found your solution today and … voila! I’m up and running. For those who believe they have tried this and failed, make sure you rename the old file and copy the new file from your public user profile. If still doesn’t work, copy from a different computer and paste in default.

    This is great news!

  12. Matt says

    April 21, 2017 at 7:54 pm

    Thank you! Finally a nice easy fix for something I have been trying to resolve for quite sometime!

  13. teba says

    March 21, 2017 at 2:33 pm

    works for me. thanks a lot

  14. Mia Zatar says

    January 4, 2017 at 4:25 pm

    I upgraded to Windows 10. I can’t find a Default folder under Users. Only Default_Migrated. But that folder is empty. Where can the Default folder be and/or what other folder should I try to replace the ntuser.dat file in?

  15. Dan Dragomir says

    November 28, 2016 at 2:08 pm

    Tried this, including local account, but still it didnt works. Any other ideas?

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Who’s Behind Technipages?

Baby and Daddy My name is Mitch Bartlett. I've been working in technology for over 20 years in a wide range of tech jobs from Tech Support to Software Testing. I started this site as a technical guide for myself and it has grown into what I hope is a useful reference for all.

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