Well, after a little while running Vista I’ve had a weird thing happen. My user profile fails to load on a fairly new install… Luckily I do most of my work in a VPC image or I’d have been rebuilding my stuff for a week. As it is I’m not sure exactly what the cause is but the event log gives me the awesome error message: The file is in use so we loaded a temporary profile that will get deleted when you log out. Thanks for playing, goodbye. Needless to say I’m a little pissed so I tracked down all the stuff I installed in the last week and removed it. Then I resorted to a file monitor and it looks like it’s either Microsoft Search or Windows OneCare. Guess I get to play with it until it comes back to life.
Anyway, last week was crazy… I’m not the only one who had issues… I had 3 clients’ servers bomb in one way or another and 2 others’ workstations crashed. Luckily nobody lost their data so far, it’s just a huge inconvenience. Hopefully this week will turn out better. Also, there was another LAN party this weekend… Photos to be posted shortly (as soon as I fix this thing enough to get my flash reader working).
Follow Up:
After some investigation I found that it was Mozy.com’s backup service client. They have since come out with a newer version that resolved the issue for me. I suggest that you try the file monitor (task manager > performance > resource monitor button at bottom) to see what is open if you can.
I’m having this exact same problem. Have been since November. I’ve found no solution yet, other than to keep rebooting (eventually, the profile will load).
I am experiencing a similar problem. Since my computer is normally logged on 24×7 and locked when not in use (but set to never go to sleep mode) I believe a restart triggers this. When I enter my login credentials, I see the Welcome…but Preparing desktop never takes place, I get a balck screen with only my cursor visible. IF I ctrl+alt+del, I get the normal options to log off, switch user, start task manager, etc….but the only option I can do is log off, which brings up the nromal logon interface again. Using a different admin on the workstation yields the same results. I’ve been able to access the computer from another one on the domain and rename my profile. After renaming the profile windows finally logged me in, but told me I was using a temporary profile that would be deleted when I logged off. I ended up editing the registry
HKLM/software/microsoft/windows nt/Profilelist and deleting the entry for my SID which had been renamed .bak and the temp entry which had the same SID. This allowed me to log on and my profile was recreated. After the next restart, I am in the same boat again……
I am having the same problem, and it is driving me crazy. I need this laptop to work for an employee but setting up the profile each time is more then he can bare. If you find a fix please drop me a line. [email protected] aka BigA
If your part of a domain. Ensure that your user id is not part of the guest group, or your not using a guest id. This will cause windows to create a local, but temporary status profile. Just ask the system admin to review your group status. This fixed the issue for me. You’ll know your fixed when your profile says type local, status local. Hope this helps. Vista treats all guest profiles as temporary.
Hi, one of our client vista computers had the same problem. User logged in but it was a new desktop and their profile status was set to ‘backup’. I just said ‘good morning IT have you tried switching it off and on again and it was fixed’ but it is an odd one. They have one care installed.
Hi Guys,
It really works,
Just delete the particular profile from registary which is causing the problem.
go to registery HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
SOFTWARE >>MICROSOFT>>WINDOWS NT>>CURRENT VERSION>>PROFILE LIST>> search the profile under <<S-1-5 >>
and DELETE THE PROFILE ENTRY.
BEFORE DELETING MAKE SURE DATA BACKUP HAS BEEN TAKEN.
Cheers,
Tarun
ummm… that sounds evil…. I wouldn’t recommend anybody do what Tarun mentioned…
I just did what Tarun suggested and it works!.
I guess the idiots in Windows forgot to check if user directory really exists under c:\users if the registry setting exists. Deleting the registry entry forces it to re-create user profile from scratch and it fixes the issue…
Nikolai
Taru’s advice worked perfectly. Be sure to make a backup of your registry just in case.
Hi guys,I had a similar situation on a vista machine today. I followed Tarun’s Advice, and when i got to the Profile List Key in regedit, the sid of the user account had a .bak at the end, and a new key with the real sid had been added. I deleted the new sid, and removed the .bak from the end, rebooted, and the profile was back.
Can confirm Simon King’s experience with this issue as well. Removing the TEMP sid (path c:\users\TEMP) and removing .bak from the original profile restored it.I have also had success in the past using a restore point to revert the Profile.