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ViProCon's avatar
ViProCon
Brass Contributor
Apr 09, 2020

Absolute maddening Win 10 login problem

Hi all.  Been 5 hours troubleshooting a ridiculous Win 10 login problem.  

User at their office had set up their own PC a year or two ago, it's either Win 10 Pro or Enterprise (Office 365's devices list for this user thinks this is Win !0 Enterprise but who knows), The user wasn't aware that by not having a network cable plugged in while unboxing a PC, you'd be able to create a local account instead of this utterly st*pid process of forcing users to create a Microsoft account.  Emphasis on st*pid.  Ok, rant done.  

 

I'm a bit fuzzy on the way the user account was set up, but it does have a PIN set on it.  I went in, and create a local admin user account, set it's password and security Q&A stuff, so by all appearance, voila, I have a local account. 

I then went through the process of converting this MS online account to a local account, which really only requires specifying what you want the username to be and then specifying a password matched pair, anda  password hint.  All that went fine and password was confirmed, no typos and what have you.  We rebooted, and now we are instead being prompted for this new local account, seemingly, but it wants a PIN again.  In the bottom left, that other new local account I create is not listed.  Instead, we just have this user, and "Other Users".  By clicking Other Users we're met with a combination of sign-in options of either an email address+password, and/or username and PIN, but never where we can type in a username and password.  The user is quite component so when I ask if this person has tried every combination of user, email, PIN, and passwords that were working earlier today or were set during our troubleshooting, nothing works at all. 

 

To bypass all that mess we booted to a WinRE USB stick, renamed cmd . exe to become utilman . exe, rebooted, and opened a command prompt by clicking Ease of Access at the login screen for the editioni of Windows installed on the hard drive  We then did things like enabled to built-in Administrator user, simple password, rebooted, and still nothing new shows in the bottom left.  So in short, I have created one local user set as admin, have (I assume successfully) converted this MS online account to a local one, and then also enabled the Administrator user account.  Through just "net user <username>" command at the command prompt, have confirmed these accounts are Active.  We keept getting prompted only for this user account at login, or Other Users.  So, I thought why not disable this user account, so maybe we'd then be prompted to log in as Administrator or my other backup account I made. Nothing.  Always the same, we only have the user, or Other Users, and in clicking Other Users, no combination of any username typed in the "email address" field and password works.  

 

Yet, I have no method of any kind to be prompted to type in a username and password.  Is there a kill function to just detach completely from MS online services? Because I suspect strongly there's some kind of unbroken tie to that.  

 

I'm at a point where I feel like Reset This PC might be the only option, all this because we converted from a MS online account to a local.  

 

Just wondering if anyone else has caught onto the fact that I vehemently hate the way MS forces unaware users to creating these online accounts? 

 

lol thank you for any help.  (edited for a few typos and clarifications).  

 

 

  • ViProCon's avatar
    ViProCon
    Brass Contributor

    ViProCon 

    FYI an update, through some article I found that talks about ways to bypass login barriers on Win 10 it talked about renaming the ngc folder on the computer, which we did via command prompt that's using System for authentication.  This got rid of the PIN prompting, leaving us with just passwords as the secondary field to match to an email address in the first field.  In short, we got into the computer, and from there via Switch User was able to get in as the Administrator.  However, the system still has it that it's the last logged in user, and Other users, as the only two options on the login screen.  Need this to be able to list all users.  I think it's a matter of detaching every form of online/MS/AAD/Office 365 type thing found on the machine so we're down to local-only accounts, but who knows.  Any thoughts?  Thanks!  

    • HotCakeX's avatar
      HotCakeX
      MVP
      Hi,
      you don't have to create a new account, you can sign into Windows using your current Microsoft account that you already have.

      there are 2 scenarios:
      1. majority of people Need to sign into their Windows 10 because Windows 10 license is associated with their Microsoft account and simply by signing in, Windows will be activated for them, so no more messing around with product keys, trying to keep them safe etc.

      2. if it's a work/enterprise environment, users will have to sign into Windows with their Active Directory or Azure Active Directory credentials to benefit from work resources and whatnot.

      I'm not sure why step went wrong in your conversation of online to offline account but If I wanted to do that, first I would make a local admin account and then delete my online account from Windows.

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