Windows 11 Home Login Page Continuously Prompts for Password Instead of PIN

For nearly a year now, my Win11 computer has been configured to have the screen timeout after 15 minutes. When I return to the laptop after an idle period, I find that the screen has turned black. Upon waking it up with a mouse-click or keyboard press, I am typically prompted for my PIN to log back in.

However, over the past week, a new issue has arisen where instead of requesting my PIN for login, the system prompts me for a password around 90% of the time. To resolve this, I have to navigate to the sign-on options and manually switch back to using the PIN.

This recent change has caused a bit of frustration as I often find myself hastily entering my PIN only to realize that the system is expecting a password instead.