Nothing short of normal Windows updates have been installed recently, and I've no idea how long this problem has existed, as my standard user account along with the admin account still work just fine.

During an attempt to sign in, if Windows displays the Please wait for the User Profile Service message for a long time, say 5 minutes, then that post will help you ...

The lion’s share of attention about the Windows 7 beta has been on consumer features. The new taskbar with its jumplists, mouse-hover features, easy navigation and the more controllable user account ...