I was looking at several Windows 7 machines in an environment that whenever a new domain user who had never logged onto a machine before got the following error message:
The User Profile Service service failed the logon.
User profile cannot be loaded.
Now in this case there was an existing Microsoft KB article for this located herehttp://support.microsoft.com/kb/947215
However in this case the cause was a different issue. I had logged successfully onto the machine as a local Administrator and confirmed no profiles already existed on the machine. When I tried to use a “Run As” the following error message occurred:
299: Only part of a ReadProcessMemory or WriteProcessMemory request was completed.
(note: On Windows 7 with UAC enabled make sure the RunAs command is used from an already elevated command prompt)
This matched an Application Event log error:
Now as I know majority of these type of profile related causes are caused by file access issues my first test was a ProcMon (http://live.sysinternals.com/ProcMon.exe
filter set to filter any events with a result of ACCESS DENIED. With ProcMon running I then repeated the Run As command. Interestingly I saw a file located in the default user profile D:\Users\Default\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\SQM\iesqmdata_setup0.aqm
(Note: The Temporary Internet Files is a hidden folder, so by default is not visible in Winodws Explorer)
I then deleted this file, the deletion of which required elevation to Administrator access. Immediately after deleting the file RunAs succeeded. Logging off I could now log back on without getting any errors.
Where did the SQM file come from?
That is an interesting question and I’m not sure exactly how it entered the default profile in the first place. However my guess is this was caused by an IE9 installation with Send Feedback to Microsoft enabled, as this this appears to be data collection from Microsoft’s Customer Experience Improvement program.