Technical help - User Profile cannot be loaded

If you've worked with Windows 7 for any length of time, you're sure to have come across this error sooner or later. Most of the time it's relatively easy fix involving the registry, which you can find here (this works for Vista, windows 7 and 8: http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/38838-user-profile-service-failed-sign-fix-windows-8-a.html However this one laptop was not playing ball. I'd ran through all of the above steps, and nothing, no new accounts could be created, the guest account wasn't working and I was in a state of confusion. After reaching the third page of Google, I found an unlikely solution here: http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1160819 THe problem was, Windows Live wasn't installed on this laptop, but I thought the idea was sound, so I tried this: Browse to C:\Users\Default (ensure you can see hidden files and folders) Right click AppData Choose Security Advanced Change permissions Edit Everyone and give them Full Control Click Okay Then click on the tick box next to Replace all child permissions with inheritable permissions from this object Click Apply then Yes to the Security warning Amazingly, this solved the issue, so my assumption is that if a file in the Default User profile has it's permissions screwed up, new accounts can't be created. Since every other solution was either to go back to a system restore point or rebuild the machine, I thought it worth blogging on here as it might save someone a lot of time and effort!