User Profile Service failed the logon after unplugging non-OS drive with "Users" folder

Question

I have used this article to move my C:\Users directory and everything inside of it to another physical disk: http://lifehacker.com/5467758/move-the-users-directory-in-windows-7

As per article, I move my Users folder from OS disk to a Data disk, and leave a hardcoded link from C:\Users to D:\Users and Windows doesn't know the difference

And it worked wonderfully . . .

. . . until I had to unplug my Data disk.

My specific set up had 3 physical HDDs (one was the Data drive) and one SSD (OS drive) all using SATA plugs. I had to shuffle HDDs, and forgot which one was my Data disk, and just unplugged them all except the main OS drive, temporarily. When I tried plugging them beck in, no matter what configuration I tried, I got the same result: Windows booted up fine from my main OS SSD drive, but then it said this:

The User Profile Service service failed the logon

And it would not let me log on. I thought that maybe I mixed up my SATA connectors, even though I thought it doesn't really matter, as long as OS drive remains in the same location. But swapping SATA connectors did not seem to help.

There is an article on that on Microsoft (http://support2.microsoft.com/kb/947215), but it seems to require me to be able to log on to an account, any account to use features of Windows to fix the situation. I can't log into my account, and I can't log into Administrator (for some reason it says it has been disabled)

My intuition tells me that Windows, after following the hard link of C:\Users -> D:\Users and seeing no drive D, got all confused, and may have invalidated the link or done something else, so even when I put in drive D, it no longer recognizes it as a valid Users directory.

How do I fix this?

EDIT: after thinking about it a bit, my intuition tells me to try to System Recovery/Command Prompt and see what's going on. I'll try that later today, but don't yet know what to do there exactly or if it will help.