Windows can not load the locally stored profile

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by: John
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Word Count: 664
Date: Tue, 1 Jun 2010 Time: 4:45 AM

Windows cannot load the locally stored profile. Possible causes of this error include insufficient security rights or a corrupt local profile. If this problem persists, contact your network administrator.

Windows cannot find the local profile and is logging you on with a temporary profile. Changes to your profile will be lost when you log off.

Ever see the above messages, probably one preceding the other? Of course you have otherwise you wouldn't be reading this!

When you get the above message on your computer desktop, laptop or anything else you have windows installed on, you can near enough guarantee that somewhere along the line the 'ntuser.dat' file for the particular user you are trying to log in under has somehow become corrupt.

Reasons why it has become corrupt are another issue. What we need to do is get the user account up and running again and I have always found that the following works...

As this error usually only affects the user account you are trying to log in under what you need to do is log in under another user account.

Let windows create the temporary account for you and keep it open.

Normally you would have a user account or maybe several and an administrator account which you could log in under but for the purpose of this exercise we'll presume that you only had the one user account and so need to create a new user account (Those who already have more than one user account may skip parts 1 to 10 below).

So... If you don't have a second user account on your p.c you need to do the following:

1. Go to Start
2. Control Panel
3. User Accounts
4. Create a new user (we use this account to do changes from so it will need full administrator privilages)
5. Log out of the Temp account.
6. Log into the new user account just created.
7. Click Start
8. Click My Computer
9. Click C: Drive
10. Click Documents and settings

Once you are in the documents and settings folder of the new account you created you should see a file called 'ntuser.dat' if you can not see it you will need to show hidden files and folders first. This is done by doing the following:

1. Start
2. Control Panel
3. Folder Options
4. View Tab
5. Click 'Show hidden files and folders' radio button and save

OK back to the documents and settings folder!

Once you have located the 'ntuser.dat' file in the new user account you will need to copy this file to the other user account (The one that wasn't working) simply highlight the 'ntuser.dat' file hold down the control key 'ctrl' + 'C' key at the same time to copy the file.

Now go back a folder so you are back in the documents and settings folder and open the folder of the user account you were having trouble with. You will see that this folder has its own 'ntuser.dat' file and this is the file that is corrupt. Rather than delete the file, we'll just rename it for now so highlight the file, right click your mouse and rename it to something like... ntuser.dat.bk

Once you have renamed the corrupt file you can now paste the copied ntuser.dat file click 'ctrl + V' keys to paste the file into this user account you'll notice that this new ntuser.dat file is a lot smaller in size than the old one but don't worry.

Once you have done this log out of the new user account and try the old one again - it should work!

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Comments

Sat, 10 Sep 2011 at 11:03 AM, by Guest
Brilliant works great!

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