Getting admin events 1508 and 1542 at startup.

Create a third account, it seems you may have a process that locks in that ...

Once loged in with the other account.
Then you can check the various registry locations HKCU, hklm hk_users\
software\microsoft\windows\currentversion\
Run
Runonce

To make sure you do not have some process.../service ...


The event seems to be when the user login, ..

I'm sorry, Arnold. But I can't quite figure out what I'm supposed to check, exactly, and what, exactly, I'm supposed to be doing doing with it.

create a new user with which you will login by default, versus your existing one, and see whether that removes/reduces the event.
You could create a separate admin account instead of the existing..

OR look/refer to https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows8_1-update/what-will-happen-if-i-delete-this-file/a9496d09-7f13-47e8-a1ae-5da80e513cf1

in short the creation of the new account will verify whether the issues you are having relate to the profile being messed up somehow.

"The assumption seems to be the profile is corrupt, but there is no indication of that" - oh, there surely is. That file UsrClass.dat is a profile component and it should not be in use already, when the userinit process tries to load it.
Please logon with a different profile (not Michael) and see if you see a similar message.

"it seems there's a problem in the loading order at bootup, no?" - no, there is no indication of that.

Some changes from troubleshooting: First note that the Dell 980 i5 is a USB 2.0 machine. I'm running two 2T Ext HD's off two USB 2.0 slots. At first they were plugged into a USB 3.0 hub plugged into a USB 2.0 slot on back. But they seemed to run better plugged directly into two 2.0 slots on back. However, I had left the USB 3.0 hub plugged into one of the slots. Nothing was hooked to it. Just as a basic step I unplugged the hub and events 1508 and 1542 disappeared from event viewer on startup and restart. Then I noticed that an old event, 1530 had been there all along, appearing after shutdown. MS KB on 1530 are a contradiction. One KB says this is normal behavior and ignore it, the other says the event should be investigated.

Here's the latest 1530:
Windows detected your registry file is still in use by other applications or services. The file will be unloaded now. The applications or services that hold your registry file may not function properly afterwards.  

 DETAIL -
 1 user registry handles leaked from \Registry\User\S-1-5-21-2987587682-1074968332-1067063631-1001:
Process 896 (\Device\HarddiskVolume3\Windows\System32\winlogon.exe) has opened key \REGISTRY\USER\S-1-5-21-2987587682-1074968332-1067063631-1001

A year or so ago when this even first occurred I found the problem to be two leftover Acronis drives. Carefully deleted all the references for the two from the registry and 1530 also disappeared. Now it's back. And it's back on Volume 3, a new 2t G-Drive. I checked the drivers. They are DRIVERS\DISK.SYS and drivers\partmgr.sys.

Volume 3 was previously a G-Tech mini 500G. New Volume three is G-Drive 2T (with its own AC). I don't see any relationship between the two even though they were both named V3.

Next thing I'm going to do is to simply switch the current Vol 3 (x) drive to a new USB port in back. But I'm sure there's more to 1530 than that. Or is there?

1530 can be ignored. It deals with when you logoff, shutdown, there is a process that does not exit on its own before the shutdown timeout period, at which point the shutdown process forcibly terminates all those outstanding processes on of which is running under your account. There are many possibilities the key referenced is a clue

Presumably actonis or similar are the backup setup I.e. At a certain time pergorm a backup, and your shutdown, 1530 events were during the time that process ran.
I.e. Scheduled backup at X, on the occasion you were using the system and saw a slow pergormance, at which point you rebooted .....

Arnold and me both suggested to test a new user profile and compare - did you find the time to do that? Please do.

Gents,

Is this what you want me to do?

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/14039/windows-7-fix-corrupted-user-profile.

The instructions require that I create two new user accounts and to move the files from the original to another.

Or do you have something simpler in mind?

No, the suggestion is not about actually switching the profile. It is about creating a new one and test with it to find out about the nature of the problem.

So (just a bit of hand-holding here, please):

My computer is in a workgroup

    1 Open User Accounts by clicking the Start button. ...
    2 Click Manage another account. ...
     3 Click Create a new account.
    4 Type the name you want to give the user account, click an account type, and then click Create Account.
    5 Restart the PC.

I only have one profile and its admin and password protected. Should I make the new profile admin or standard?

Steps are correct 1-4. 5 would be just logoff and logon with the new account. It does not have to be an admin for the test, better make it a standard user.

Didn't work. Created the account without problems, but when I went to logon to the new account, I got the error "User Profile failed at the logon." Restarted and tried again. Same thing. Changed to admin account. Same thing. Other message was "user account cannot be loaded."

Here, from admin events after failure, are some things that might be helpful:

ID 6004: The winlogon notification subscriber <Profiles> failed a critical notification event.
ID 1509 User Profile general: Windows cannot copy file C:\Users\Default\ntuser.dat to location C:\Users\Test1\ntuser.dat. This error may be caused by network problems or insufficient security rights.   DETAIL - Access is denied.
ID 1511 User profile service: Windows cannot find the local profile and is logging you on with a temporary profile. Changes you make to this profile will be lost when you log off.
ID 6001: The winlogon notification subscriber <Sens> failed a notification event.

And I found this at answers/MS.com

Maybe something with the permissions on ntuser.dat

Two of the event ID have temporarily stopped. Only 1530 left. Machine is working okay, for the moment.