Win 11 login, freezes, create pin

Working on a friends Samsung notebook, and I am going crazy,. Originally installed Win 10 home, factory reset. Upgraded home to Pro with a new key, got all of the updates possible.

Installed Win 11 Pro from a USB drive, seemed to work fine. Went out and got all of the updates possible, running 25H2 I believe. Removed the fancy lock screen pic, went to a generic blue background. With all of that said, there are multiple occasions during login, that the keyboard does not work for entering the password, or it will take 1 character only, and then freeze. The mouse moves, but selecting anything to click on provides zero responses.

When i do finally get logged in after multiple reboots, I try to go into Settings, Accounts, and select to change/remove the password. From there, it goes into what appears to be a continuous loop... Enter account sign in, confirm I am a parent (why is this even there?) and from there I can choose to send a code to the account email or to use the password to sign in... when I do either of these processes, it just loops back to asking the same thing over and over again.

I also tried to setup a PIN, and again the same process repeats over and over.

Checking Windows Update, and it tells me everything is current. Honestly about ready to find a hammer....

Suggestions please, and thanks in advance...

Gary :)