This error could be quite a rude shock when you try to logon to your Windows PC. Luckily, it can be easily resolved with minimal data loss if at all any.
Why am I getting this error?
This means your user profile is corrupted or misconfigured. My first encounter with this was after I did a PC reset using Windows 10’s inbuilt feature. You could also encounter this error after a user profile creation, partition resizing, system restore or Windows update.
How do I fix this error
There are two scenarios you might encounter and I’ll walk you through both:
A. If you can enter Safe Mode
- Return to the Logon screen
- Click the Power icon
- Hold the Shift key on your keyboard then click Restart
- You should enter a Choose an option blue screen
- Select Troubleshoot > Advanced options > Startup Settings
- Under Startup Setting. Select Restart
- The screen will reboot to another blue screen
- At the Startup Settings screen, tap 5 (Enable Safe Mode With Networking)
- Once logged into Safe Mode, tap the Windows button (Start Menu) and search for regedit
- Right-click regedit from the search result and choose Run as Administrator
- In Registry Editor, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList
- Under ProfileList, you’ll find two identical folders (same name except one ends with .bak)
- The .bak suffix signifies a backup or inactive version. Change .bak to .old (on the folder with .bak) then add .bak to the one without .bak. Now, remove .old from the folder with .old . What’s you’ve essentially done is flip where the .bak is while avoiding a name clash
- Select the folder without .bak
- On the right pane, right-click State and choose modify
- Set Value data to 0 and click OK
- Right-click RefCount and choose modify
- Set Value data to 0 and click OK
- Exit Registry Editor and reboot your PC
B. If you can’t enter Safe Mode
This was exactly my situation. Safe Mode got stuck in a black screen and all I could access was some parts via Task Manager. It was down to a Windows re-install for me.
I was able to access drives using: Task manager > Users > Right-click current user > Manage user accounts > Control panel > System and Security > Administrative Tools but could not initiate a Windows install from Safe Mode.
Here’s what I did
- If your PC supports it, you could create a bootable Window 10 USB drive then reinstall windows but my mini-PC didn’t support this option. Proceed if you’re on the same boat
- On another PC, download your preferred Windows 10 ISO and extract its contents (files and folders) into a a USB drive
- Connect the USB drive to your PC
- Return to the Logon screen
- Click the Power icon
- Hold the Shift key on your keyboard then click Restart
- You should enter a Choose an option blue screen
- Select Troubleshoot > Advanced options > Command prompt
- Choose your user profile in the Command Prompt blue screen (enter password if prompted)
- You should now see a command prompt window x:\windows\system32
- Type cd\ to return to the root of x drive
- Now, since you don’t know what letter has been assigned to your drives, you try access drives from a to z e.g type a: then tap enter, type b: then tap enter
- If drive a exists, for example, you should see a:\>
- A faster way is to type diskpart then press enter. Once in DISKPART, run list disk then sel disk * where * is the disk number. Finally, run detail disk . You can then obtain the drive letter
- Your goal is to enter the USB drive (and folder if not in root) where your windows installation files are
- Once in this drive, type dir to view its contents and then navigate to where your setup.exe file is located
- Type setup.exe and press Enter
- The Windows setup box should appear
- Follow the Windows 10 installation procedure