Windows 7 Error: "The group policy client service failed the logon"

kc_kyle

kc_kyle

kc_kyle

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22 Dec 2010
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103
My home desktop won't get past the user log-in screen. Whenever I try to log in to my account I get this error message: "the group policy client service failed the logon". I've browsed many forums but none of the solutions mentioned have applied to my situation.

Firstly, my computer has only one user account, which is the evidently corrupt one. Therefore, I can not log in through another account and repair/duplicate the user files from there.

I also can not boot in safe mode. Every time I press F8 on boot there is a message that there's a disk read error and that I need to restart the computer.

I've also tried repairing my windows files using the boot disc, which didn't help and it seems there is no restore point available. In fact, looking a little deeper, it appears my local disk has changed from being the C-drive to the E-drive and my data HDD has become the C-drive. I'm not sure if this is the root of the problem but in some cases it doesn't even recognise the hard drive - stating it as "unknown disk".

As I mentioned before, I have two hard drives: an SSD with the operating system and my program files on, and an HDD with my data, so I could technically perform a clean install without wiping all my data (please say if this isn't the case!).

Otherwise, if anybody has any other ideas on how to solve this problem without clean installing, it would be greatly appreciated. Just to recap, I can not reach the desktop and safe mode won't start either. I can only think that the only solution left would be through a cmd prompt off the boot disk. However, I haven't seen any mention of that in other forums.
 
remove the other drive, leaving just your SSD in place, and try to boot. If that fails try to boot from safe mode, with just the one drive in place. What happens then?

If that sill fails, make a bootable USB stick with Windows 7 on it and boot from it, repair the installation from there.
 
Okay, I'll give it a go. Incidentally, I just tried startup repair and it says root cause is "The partition table does not have a valid System Partition."

Not sure how this can come to be, to be honest. My only guess is that Nero Media Home has somehow corrupted my computer. It has it's own user profile and has been failing to start on start up in recent weeks.
 
So I think I've solved my problem so I'll post what I did for anyone who might have a similar issue:

So I disconnected my data hard drive, leaving the SSD with the OS still connected. By doing this I could then start the computer in safe mode, which worked fine. This took me to the Windows Install screen (I still had my Windows 7 boot disc in the drive) where I could see my system restore points. I restored it to a time before this problem started and added a guest profile, whilst also uninstalling Nero MediaHome, which I think has caused my computer all this confusion. It worked on reboot in normal mode so I reconnected my data hard drive and started up Windows. It worked so I'm now creating a system image should something irreparable happen. Cheers for the help!
 
I am indeed. What does that have to do with it?
Click to expand...

That's probably your problem, a recent update (perhaps from 2013 to 2014) does not correctly backup your user profile or something. You just need to go into the profile list in the registry and do some renames,

Go here
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList

you will probably see two identical entries one will have a .bak on the end of it. On the one with no extension rename it and add .tmp or something then rename the other one to remove the .bak
 
nightmare99 said:
That's probably your problem, a recent update (perhaps from 2013 to 2014) does not correctly backup your user profile or something. You just need to go into the profile list in the registry and do some renames,

Go here
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList

you will probably see two identical entries one will have a .bak on the end of it. On the one with no extension rename it and add .tmp or something then rename the other one to remove the .bak
Click to expand...

I've gone to the ProfileList but I don't recognise anything there from what you state. Firstly the ProfileList folder contains 6 other folder with coded names (e.g. "S-1-5-18") and within those folder are items such as ProfileImagePath, RefCount, ProfileLoadTimeHigh etc. But there is nothing with an extension of .bak, nor .tmp.

On the ProfileList tab itself it as (Default), Default, ProfilesDirectory, ProgramData and Public, but nothing with any such extensions. What does this mean?
 
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