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Information about known causes and solutions for the error message "<strong>Other User</strong>" at the logon screen and other login problems affecting the ability to access your PC on<strong> Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, </strong>and <strong>8.1.</strong>
<h2>About "Other User"</h2>
[kbintro]
<h3>Description and Symptoms</h3>
The error messages, alerts, warnings, and symptoms below are tied to this error.
<h4>Symptom 1: "Other User" is the only account on the login screen</h4>
When attempting to start up a PC, when reaching the regular login screen only "Other User" is shown on the screen. It may or may not be accompanied with other error details or warning texts:

The full text:
<pre>Other User</pre>
<h3>Causes of this Error</h3>
This error has been known to occur as a result of one or more of the following:
<h4>Cause 1: Corrupted user profiles in registry</h4>
Windows is a multi-user operating system, where each user's account is fully isolated from all other users. User profiles live in separate folders on the drive, and can be found under C:\Users\ on Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10. Windows XP users will find the profiles stored in the C:\Documents and Settings\ folder. The list of these user accounts is maintained in the registry key
<pre>HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList</pre>
When this registry key becomes corrupted, lost, or deleted, Windows will be unable to display a list of accounts and the problem above will be encountered.
<h4>Cause 2: TDSS/Alureon virus infection</h4>
Your PC has probably been infected by a variant of <a href="http://bitly.com/Alureon" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the Alureon virus</a>, also known as TDSS. Alureon is a highly-adaptive virus that connects your PC to the TDL-4 botnet, giving complete access and control of your PC to a remote attacker. One of the methods that Alureon uses to hide itself from antivirus utilities and other malware scanners involves the installation of a rootkit to the bootsector and master boot record (MBR) of your disk. To avoid detection and attempts by the user at removing it, the TDSS virus does not intentionally crash the PC; but it turns out that a certain Windows update, once installed, conflicts with the code of the Alureon virus and causes system failure.

Depending on the variant of the Alureon virus your PC was infected with, you might have encountered either blue screens of death (BSODs) off and on while running Windows or else became unable to boot into Windows at all due to a variety of boot-related issues and messages. The combination of the Windows update hotfix and certain variants of the TDSS virus and accompanying rootkit also often cause the corruption of the user profile and an inability to login to your Windows desktop.

Usually, this is accompanied by boot problems that won't even let you got into Windows or see the login screen. <a href="/EasyRE/">EasyRE</a> uses advanced heuristics and recovery algorithms to properly rewrite the bootsector and correct boot-related issues, removing the rootkit portion of the TDSS virus, restoring full boot functionality to Windows and even allowing antivirus and antispyware products to find and remove the TDSS virus, as it has deactivated the rootkit that prevented it from being detected in the first place. Unfortunately, on Windows Vista (but not on Windows XP, 7, or 8) the damage to the user profile persists even though the virus itself has been deactivated, and users encounter a logon screen with only "Other User" present.
<h4>Cause 3: Deleted user profiles</h4>
If the actual user profiles on disk (in C:\Users\ or C:\Documents and Settings\) have been physically deleted, or the user registry hive, stored in a file called NTUSER.DAT in the user profile folder, has been deleted or corrupted for all accounts on the machine, the "Other User" problem can present.
<h4>Cause 4: FlipShare software for FlipHD Cameras</h4>
FlipShare software for the FlipHD cameras by Cisco Systems is known to cause this error. If you've recently installed FlipShare or if you've recently updated your FlipShare software installation, your user profiles can be corrupted (as described in Cause 1 above).

This error is due to a poorly-written software update, and is documented by dozens of affected FlipHD camera users.
<h2>Fix "Other User" on Windows XP</h2>
This error is not known to affect Windows XP.
<h2>Fix "Other User" on Windows Vista, 7, 8 or 8.1</h2>
[setupcd]
<h3>Fix #1: Manually Edit the Registry</h3>
<p class="warning"><strong>Editing the Windows Registry!</strong>
The steps below involve editing the registry. Extreme caution should be taken. Also, if you are unable to boot into Windows, you will need to either mount the registry hive from another computer or use the alternate fixes below.</p>

<ol>
 	<li>Press [winkey] + <kbd>R</kbd> to launch the run dialog</li>
 	<li>Then type in <code>regedit.exe</code> and press <kbd>Enter</kbd></li>
 	<li>Navigate to <code>[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList]</code></li>
 	<li>Create a backup of the <code>ProfileList</code> key by exporting it somewhere safe.</li>
 	<li><code>ProfileList</code> will contain many subkeys named similar to <code>S-1-5-21-3623811015-3361044348-30300820-1013</code></li>
 	<li>Each should contain at least the three value-sets: <code>Flags</code>, <code>ProfileImagePath</code>, and <code>State</code>. Some keys can contain more, but these are the minimum contents.</li>
 	<li><code>ProfileImagePath</code> will show the path to the user profile folder. You will usually have one for each user on the system, and one for each of the three system entries <code>SystemProfile</code>, <code>LocalService</code>, and <code>NetworkService</code></li>
 	<li>Delete any key (i.e. the whole <code>S-1-x-xx-…</code> folder) that does not contain at least those three values</li>
 	<li>Delete the key called <code>.DEFAULT</code>, if it exists</li>
</ol>
<h3>Fix #2: Restore the registry</h3>
As this error can be caused by corruption of the Windows registry, a fix may be possible by restoring the registry to an earlier state with Easy Recovery Essentials.

[easyre operation="systemrestore" error="Other User" bootscreen="vista-7-8" guaranteed="false"]
<h3>Fix #3: Run System Restore</h3>
If EasyRE is not able to repair the Other User problem, you can try using a full system restore from the Startup Repair on the Windows setup CD/DVD.

[partial name="partial_system_restore"]
<h2>More Information</h2>
<h3>Linked Knowledgebase Entries</h3>
The errors below have been verified as being associated with or related to this problem:
<ul>
 	<li><a title="BOOTMGR is Missing: Fix for Windows Vista, 7, 8, 8.1" href="http://neosmart.net/wiki/bootmgr-is-missing/">Bootmgr is missing</a></li>
 	<li><a title="winload.exe is missing or corrupt: Fix for Windows Vista, 7, 8" href="http://neosmart.net/wiki/winload-exe-missing-corrupt/">Winload.exe is missing or corrupt</a></li>
</ul>
[partial name="partial_moreinfo" versions="vista,7,8,server2008,server2012"]