User Profile Service Service Fails to Load

When logging on Windows Vista Home Premium fails to load the User Profile Service. The user account is not on the disk or may be on a network, etc, so cannot be found. After searching google, this seems to be a problem many have encountered. A possible solution offered was to do a repair of files using the hidden Dell restore partition (no luck there). I tried several system restore points, but Windows encounterd a problem each time and didn't change anything. Another solution was to go to safe mode invoke CMD and type in "net user administrator /active:yes" (w/o the quotes) and upon seeing "commmand completed successfully" restart the computer and the welcome screen comes up with the built-in Administrator account (it worked, so far so good). From there go to the control panel/user accounts and create a new administrator account. This does not work for me as Windows cannot find my user account. While operating with the temporary Administrator account, another solution offered was to type regedit in the search box from the start menu and go to HKey_Local_Machine\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\Current Version\Profile List and insure that Key doesn't end in .bak, RefCount value is 0 and State value is 0. My problem may be in here. I have the following entries listed:
1. S-1-5-18
2. S-1-5-19
3. S-1-5-20
4. S-1-5-21-xxxxx....1000
5. S-1-5-21-xxxxx....1000.Bak, Path is C:\Users\John, RefCount=0, State=32768
6. S-1-5-21-xxxxx....1001
7. S-1-5-21-xxxxx....1001.Bak, Path is C:\Users\1USR_NMPR, RefCount=2, State=32768

I would appreciate it if someone could verify what their values are and advise if and how I should change mine.

It has been very frustrating the past 2 days trying to figure out what happened and what to do about it to get the system to work again. The only thing I did immediately prior to losing my user profile was install Acronis True Image 10 from a thumb drive. I went thru the safely remove hardware procedure and believe I did it correctly, but when I did the repair, above, a root cause that showed up was that I removed the thumb drive while it was in use and I should put it back in to remove it properly. I did do that to no avail.

I could simply reinstall the OS, but I have quite a bit of music that I just bought from iTunes and loaded hoards of music from my CDs which would be lost in the process. After installing True Image my next step was to take an image, but I obviously couldn't. I should have backed up the music to a few DVDs, but didn't.

I have the Dell XPS 410, quad core 6600, Vista Home Premium, about 2 months old.

Any help with this or other solutions will be much appreciated.

Sorry this had to be so long a post, John

Message Edited by poppadog on 11-07-2007 10:38 AM

Message Edited by poppadog on 11-07-2007 10:41 AM

Message Edited by poppadog on 11-07-2007 11:00 AM