Windows could not connect to the User Profile Service service \ Desktop is not available\ The dependency service or group failed to start errors in Windows Server 2008

Hi,

I was getting the above error after logging into the Windows Server 2008 machine. Tried out different things but nothing helped.

Finally we figured out the reason for this. Actually someone had configured the User Profile Service to run under a different credentials instead of Local System.

Running it back under the Local System account resolved the issue for us.

Hope it helps.