Login goes back to login screen

Hi, yes the new Windows 11 machine is set up the same ways as our old Windows 10 box. Local accounts for all logins, though we all have Microsoft accounts (the kids need them for Minecraft)

I'll try your suggestions, but it may take a few days to confirm whether it's worked (the bug only happens ever 3 or 4 days.)

The option 1 you suggested didn't work, the login problem happened again.

I'll try option 2 tonight, but I think it's a bug in Windows 11, not a corrupt file. I don't think continually reinstalling it is going to help.

Option 2 didn't work either. I reinstalled Windows 11 last night (keeping my settings) but it didn't work. This morning I had the same login problem as before.

After resetting I logged into my admin account, then tried to switch users to my personal account, but it just went back to the login screen again. That just repeats. It checks my password is correct but just goes back to the login screen again. Resetting the machine fixes the problem, temporarily.

Are there any diagnostics I can perform to narrow down the problem? For example will there be error messages somewhere?

Hi ,Neil

Thank you for your detailed follow-up—I completely understand how frustrating it must be to encounter the same login issue even after reinstalling Windows 11 with your settings preserved. It’s understandable that you may suspect this is a bug in Windows 11, but based on the current information, there isn’t enough evidence to confirm that. If you’d like Microsoft to investigate this further, you can submit the issue through the Feedback Hub.

As of now, I haven’t found any officially published known issues or public reports from other users describing this specific problem. For reference, I also have multiple accounts set up on my own Windows device (not shared with others), and so far, I haven’t encountered anything similar—though I have seen occasional login issues with one particular account (not the same symptom as yours where it returns to the login screen)

From what you described, especially since standard repair methods haven’t resolved it, the root cause is likely within the user account configuration itself. An “in-place upgrade” is like replacing the entire framework of a house while carefully preserving all the furniture and personal items inside (your files, settings, and app data). But if the issue lies with a broken piece of “furniture” (a corrupted configuration file), then replacing the house frame won’t help—because that broken item is still there.

What you’re experiencing—where the system accepts the password, tries to log in, but then returns to the login screen—is a classic symptom of a corrupted user profile. Windows attempts to load your personal settings (e.g., the NTUSER.dat registry file), fails, and Winlogon (Windows Logon Manager) cannot complete the login process, so it throws you back to the login screen.

You asked how to diagnose and check for error messages. Let’s proceed in two steps.

Step 1: Check the Event Viewer

This is where Windows logs all background errors. We’re likely to find the exact cause of the login failure here.

1. Log in to an administrator account that works.
2. Click the Start button and type Event Viewer, then open it.
3. In the left panel, expand Windows Logs.
4. Click both Application and System logs to review.
5. In the right-hand Actions panel, click Filter Current Log, and check Error and Warning to narrow down the list.
6. Most important: Recall the approximate time when the login failure happened, and check logs around that time.
7. Pay special attention to logs from sources like “User Profile Service”, “Winlogon”, or anything related to user login or profile issues. The details often point to the specific file that failed to load or explain why the login couldn’t proceed. Please screenshot or copy any relevant error messages you find and share them.

Step 2: Create a New User Account (Gold Standard Test)

This will test whether the issue is truly with the existing user profile. We’ll create a brand-new, clean “room” to see if it has the same issue.

Follow these steps to create a new account:

Open CMD as Administrator and run:

net user USERNAME PASSWORD /add

If the command is successful, run this next:

net localgroup administrators USERNAME /add

Replace USERNAME and PASSWORD with any name and password you’d like. If you don’t want a password, omit it.

Now log in to the new account and use it normally for a while. Reboot and switch users several times to see whether the login issue reoccurs.

• If the new account works normally, this strongly confirms that your old user profile is corrupted beyond repair. In this case, there’s no effective fix for the old profile—you’re better off migrating your personal files to the new account and making it your primary one.
• If the new account also experiences the same login problem, it points to a deeper issue—such as a third-party service or driver affecting all users, or in rare cases, a hardware problem (like disk errors). At that point, we can proceed with deeper diagnostics.

Let me know how it goes!

Best Regards

Ami | Microsoft Q&A Support Specialist

There are 5 users created on the machine (2 children, 2 adults, and an admin account). All 5 have the same problem. Usually when it happens 1 or 2 of the accounts still work, but the others all have the same problem at the same time.

While I was typing this very comment I tried to bring up the "Terminal (admin)" from the Start button to create a new user (as you suggested), but get the memory errors below. Sorry it's a bit out of focus. The terminal window couldn't be launched.

I also had the login problem, at the same time as that memory error. I changed to the admin user, to try to create the new user, but couldn't get back to this account. I had to restart.

Interestingly Paint also refused to launch, and the snip tool shortcut stopped working. Even the mouse pointer vanishes. The other odd effect is that "Sleep" vanishes from the power options (see below) and even my sleep shortcut key stops working. All of this happens regularly, and is fixed temporarily by a restart.

I think I'm hitting some kind of memory management bug, where it can't allocate enough memory for tasks even though there is plenty of memory available. That could also explain the login issue. The machine has 32GB of memory, and I ran a memory test 2 days ago which came up clean. Task manager says 52% of memory is in use by processes. The graphics driver is newly downloaded and installed, from Nvidia for my GTX 5080 card.

The login problem is definitely related to the terminal being unable to come up, and the snip tool failing. It happened again and I had to take another photo with my camera as the snip tool and screen capture don't work (they will work again after a restart):