The Group Policy Client service failed the logon. Access is denied

I would greatly appreciate any assistance.

I got the dreaded "User Profile Error - Logged on with a Temporary Profile" screen 2 days ago. I saw google updater briefly before my system restarted and I've read that may be a cause. Anyway, I was able to back up most of my files. I restarted my laptop and to my surprise, it was back except the theme was different and couldn't be altered which I could deal with. A few other things were off but it was usable.

Unfortunately, a little before midnight, there was a power outage. My laptop has a dead battery (well almost dead so it gives you about a minute) so I just shut down without closing each program one by one. I force quit but it did shut down on its own. The power came back on but I got the following error when I tried to login this afternoon.

"The Group Policy Client service failed the logon. Access is denied"

I'm running Vista Ultimate. I could not get past the login screen. I could login in as guest but I only had one administrator account. I was able to boot in safe mode and my files are still there. I was even able to export my Firefox history, save my passwords and do a back up of that. I created a new administrator account in safe mode. I was able to login and use my laptop normally (connect to internet etc) but of course, it's not my real account.

I do not have the cd that the laptop came with because it was a hand-me down, come as is. I've been using it since 2006. I cannot do a system restore, it doesn't go back far enough.

Is there anything I can do. I would really like to be able to use my laptop's previous administrator account with my files and settings as I'm accustomed to.

Lets hope with a little luck the explanation given in this great tutorial resolves your problem.
http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/135858-user-profile-error-logged-temporary-profile.html

Thanks for the link. I want to try it as I had to restore a profile in 2010 via a tutorial here. But, one thing that concerns me is right now I have a new admin account and it's working. Is there a possibility that, as a consequence of trying to restore the profile, I will lose access altogether? Perhaps it would be better to ask it in that thread, not sure.

Hello Kayla,

No worries. A user profile is not the same as a user account. A user profile is only a collection of settings that make the computer look and work the way you want it to for a user account. It contains the account's settings for desktop backgrounds, screen savers, pointer preferences, sound settings, and other features. User profiles ensure that your personal preferences are used whenever you sign in to Windows.

When you do the tutorial, it basically deletes the bad user profile to have a new profile created for the user account.