wrote:
On Fri, 4 May 2018 22:02:13 -0500, VanguardLH wrote:

Mike S wrote:

About once a week for the past 3 weeks my w7 x64 ult boots really slow,
taking over a minute for the desktop to appear. I see, "Please wait for
the User Profile Service" for many seconds, then a black screen for
another long delay, and finally the desktop. I read somewhere that
flushing the DNS cache resolved this for some people, and it seems like
that has been working for me, whenever I do that I get about a week or
normal boot speeds. Does anyone have any idea what is causing this and
how to resolve it? Should I figure out how to run a script at shutdown
to flush the DNS cache every shutdown?
The User Profile Service manages the user profiles after Windows startup
followed by loading whatever user profile into which you log into (aka
Windows account). Profiles can be copied, deleted, added/created, and
even become corrupt. Because of possible corruption of a user profile
is why you should NEVER use the Administrator account as your own
personal account. Administrator should be left alone for use only in
emergencies. If you run out of admin-level Windows accounts, you lose
control of managing Windows.

In the services manager (services.msc), the following is the description
for the User Profile Service:

This service is responsible for loading and unloading user profiles.
If this service is stopped or disabled, users will no longer be able
to successfully logon or logoff, applications may have problems
getting to users' data, and components registered to receive profile
event notifications will not receive them.

I recall but not the specifics that there was something about fixing the
shutdown of this service upon Windows shutdown. I think it was called
the User Profile Hive Cleanup Service (UPHClean). I used it back in
Windows XP but didn't need it thereafter.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/deta...p_service.html
https://searchenterprisedesktop.tech...ofile-problems

These kind of OS-specific fixes is why I do *not* upgrade to a new
version of Windows. I start with a fresh install of the OS and then
review what apps to install again but in the fresh OS install and
migrate my data from my backups. You don't want to be lugging along
fixes for the prior OS that are not applicable or incompatible with the
new OS. Upgrades can be faster but they carry along more pollution.

You could try restoring your user profile folder (%userprofile%) from
your backups that were saved before the problem arose. Else, you could
create a new user profile (Windows account) and copy what you can from
your old profile folder.

https://neosmart.net/wiki/corrupt-user-profile/

You need an admin-level Windows account to create or manage profiles and
why I mentioned you should NEVER use the Administrator account except in
these type of emergencies. In fact, after installing Windows, I usually
create a secondary admin-level account called AdminBackup (in addition
to my own personal-use account since I do too many things that require
admin privs so a restricted user account is not an option). Instead and
for quite a while, I rely on backups to get me back to a prior working
state.

Your user profile is in the file system on your storage media (disk).
Like with any file system, a defective drive could cause corruption of
the file system or of the files themselves. When was the last time you
ran "chkdsk c: /r"? Do you have a drive monitor running that checks the
S.M.A.R.T. attributes to monitor the health of your drive(s)?

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/...user-profiles/

I've encountered only 1 actually corrupted user profile so I know it can
happen. There were no backups so it was easier to create a new user
profile and move on with that. With users installing lots of software
without realizing the impact on load during startup, often they neglect
that some of that software adds startup programs, services, WinLogon
events, logon scripts by account, and other means of loading software on
starting Windows or as part of the logon process.

That flushing the local DNS cache ("ipconfig /flushdns") temporarily
eliminates the logon hang is more likely due to some software you choose
to install and loads on either Windows startup or upon login. For
example, maybe you are running a local caching DNS proxy that loads on
Windows startup or login, and it has a problem with the Windows' DNS
Client's cache. When the problem arises next time, see what happens
when you boot into Windows' safe mode. That eliminates loading of
startup programs and non-critical services. You could also peek into
Event Viewer to see if it reports problems at the time of a Windows
startup and login.

Thanks for a lot of info.

I have Win 7 Pro. User Accounts only shows 2 Accounts:

- My Account which is says my user name and Administrator

- Guest Account.

I use Macrium Reflect regularly to have recent backups of Windows and
all installed programs. Whenever I want to make some significant
change, I will make an image first. Then after the change seems to
work ok, I'll make another image. I keep a notebook log on all that
kind of stuff.

2 questions:

To avoid losing the only Administrator account, should I create
another Administrator account and not use it unless my account gets
trashed?

Above, you said "I rely on backups to get me back to a prior working
state." Can you explain what backups you mean?

thanks.

DC

Using a Macrium emergency boot disc, you are Administrator at
that time. And you have permission to replace the entire C:
and System Reserved, with the one recorded in the MRIMG file.

If you want to create another account, then go to Groups
and add the Administrator Group to the account, that will
give you a spare account to use.

control userpasswords2

That should offer some options.

Paul