Fixing NERR_RplConfigNotEmpty (0X00000A4A) on Windows Server

When this error hits

You're running Windows Server 2012 R2, 2016, or 2019. You open System Properties > User Profiles, select a profile that was left behind after a user left the company, and hit Delete. Instead of getting rid of it, you get a dialog saying There are profiles using this configuration with error code 0X00000A4A (NERR_RplConfigNotEmpty). This usually happens after you've removed the user from Active Directory but the local profile folder still hangs around, or after a failed profile migration.

What's actually happening

The error code NERR_RplConfigNotEmpty is a remnant from the Remote Program Load (RPL) service — a legacy feature from Windows NT 4.0 days that managed diskless workstations. In modern Windows, this error gets repurposed by the profile subsystem. What's really going on: somewhere in the registry, a ProfileList key still references that user's SID, and a subkey called RplConfigNotEmpty might be set, or more commonly, a leftover State flag is confusing the profile manager. The system sees that profile as still "owned" by an RPL configuration entry that no longer exists. The fix isn't to fight with the GUI — you need to clean the registry reference by hand.

Step-by-step fix

1. Open Regedit as Administrator. Press Win+R, type regedit, right-click and pick Run as administrator. You need elevated rights because the profile keys are in the SAM hive.
2. Navigate to the ProfileList key. Go to:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList
3. Find the offending SID. Expand the ProfileList key. You'll see a list of SIDs (long strings like S-1-12-1-1234567890-1234567890-1234567890-123456789). Click each one and look at the ProfileImagePath value in the right pane — it shows the folder path. Find the one matching the profile you tried to delete.
4. Backup the key. Right-click that SID key and select Export. Save it to your desktop as stuck-profile-backup.reg. If something goes wrong, double-click that file to restore it.
5. Delete the SID key. Right-click the SID key and choose Delete. Confirm the prompt.
6. Reboot the machine. This is not optional — the profile subsystem caches these entries aggressively. A restart clears the cache.
7. Delete the profile folder. Navigate to C:\Users (or wherever your user profiles live) and delete the folder that matched the SID. It should go without complaint now.

If it still fails

Sometimes the folder itself has permission issues that prevent deletion even after the registry is clean. Run this command in an elevated Command Prompt to force-remove it:

takeown /f "C:\Users\OldUserName" /r /d y
icacls "C:\Users\OldUserName" /grant Administrators:F /t
rmdir /s /q "C:\Users\OldUserName"

If you still can't delete the profile through System Properties, the problem might be a corrupted ProfileList key for a different SID — maybe a system profile. Check the State value inside each SID. A State of 0 means the profile is loaded. If you see a State of 0 for a profile you're sure isn't in use, that's likely the culprit. Set it to 1 (unloaded), reboot, then try deletion again.

One more edge case: if the user's SID appears twice in ProfileList — once under .bak or with a weird suffix — delete the duplicate. Windows can get confused when two entries point to the same folder.

Why this works

The GUI profile delete dialog queries the ProfileList registry key. When it finds a SID that has certain flags (like RplConfigNotEmpty or a mismatched State), it bails out with that error. By removing the registry entry entirely, you cut the Gordian knot — the system no longer knows about the profile, so it can't complain about it. The profile folder is just a regular directory at that point. Simple, but effective.