Upgrade from W2K causes Userenv 1508 Error

Tech-Archive recommends: Fix windows errors by optimizing your registry

From: Jason Peterson (noemail)
Date: 11/18/04 

Date: Thu, 18 Nov 2004 10:13:18 -0500

I recently upgraded several workstations in our office from Windows 2000 to Windows XP Pro. Occassionaly, when users of these computers attempt to login in the morning after logging off the night before, they get an "unable to load user profile" error. Several event log entries are created as sampled below:
  Event Type: Error
  Event Source: Userenv
  Event Category: None
  Event ID: 1508
  Date: 11/13/2004
  Time: 7:29:03 PM
  User: NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM
  Computer: TEST
  Description:
  Windows was unable to load the registry. This is often caused by insufficient memory or insufficient security rights.

   DETAIL - The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process. for C:\Documents and Settings\test\ntuser.dat

  Event Type: Error
  Event Source: Userenv
  Event Category: None
  Event ID: 1502
  Date: 11/13/2004
  Time: 7:29:11 PM
  User: SCHOLER\sgoffinet
  Computer: TEST
  Description:
  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.

   DETAIL - The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process.
These are followed with entries for backing up the user's profile and logging in with a temporary profile. It appears that for some reason the ntuser.dat file is not being unloaded completely during the previous log off. In order to login, the user must restart the computer.

All users are in a Windows SBS 2003 domain and use roaming profiles (purely for profile backup purposes). I have verified that the users have proper access to the network profile path and files. This is confirmed by the fact that the network profile cache is being updated at login.

I have tried installing Microsoft's User Profile Hive Cleanup utility, but it has not resolved the problem.

Jason Peterson

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