Error “User profile service failed the logon” After Migration

Scenario

When booting up Windows from target disk after migration you receive a “User profile service failed the logon” error message

Reason

Most probably you have excluded your Users folder from the migration or it was not on source Windows partition initially and registry paths became incorrect due to drive letters changing. Since it is specific for every PC, registry paths can not be corrected automatically.

Solution

for Users folder:
– Boot your SSD in Safe Mode (press F8 at Windows loading start), even if you exclude users folder you should be able to log in as temporary user.
– Open Command Prompt (Start – type: cmd)
– Run the following command (replace X with the letter which your old Windows drive with Users folder has)

mklink /j C:\Users X:\Users

It will create directory junction from Users folder on drive X to drive C and registry paths become valid.

Reboot and log in normally.

If it does not help, please boot into Safe Mode again and do the following:
– Open Windows Registry (Start or press Win+R and type regedit)
– Find the key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList and correct path to your Users folder (%SystemDrive% refers to C, so you may need to change it to D:\Users, e.g.)
– There is one line for each profile. If a profile is bad, check:

a) That the key name doesn’t end in “.bak” (remove .bak if there)
b) That the RefCount value is 0 (change it if different)
c) That the State value is 0 (change if different)

– Make any necessary changes, close Regedit and try to log in as that user.
– Reboot PC and check if you could log in now.

Migrate OS to SSD
Tags: issue, migration, windows

Loading...