User Profile
FlashGordon7
Copper Contributor
Joined Feb 08, 2021
User Widgets
Recent Discussions
file explorer not refreshing, notepad print not working, won't shutdown, windows for icloud prob
This is a really dramatic and surprising result so I wanted to tell people about it. A few months back I started to have a lot of problems with my Windows 10 Pro machine and they all happened at the same time. File explorer wouldn't refresh automatically (delete a file and it wouldn't go away until I explicitly selected refresh on the screen), print stopped working even to a usb attached printer, notepad print never worked (notepad would hang up after printing something from it), the machine wouldn't shut down if you used the gui shutdown controls. Since it happened suddenly and they were Windows functions I thought it was Windows update that caused the problems. I actually got into some Windows recovery situations and I noticed the recovery was failing on an apple icloud directory (something like ~/apple.com/Numbers) which made me suspicious. For the file explorer situation I tried a ton of things from the internet and none of them would work long term. Then I uninstalled the Apple iCloud App ( you have to uninstall it in Settings -> Apps, it isn't in Control Panel Uninstall Programs). The result was dramatic. All the problems on my Windows 10 Pro machine went away and I am very convinced it was uninstalling Apple iCloud and rebooting that did it. Just in case it matters I didn't have iTunes or Apple Music on this Win 10 Pro machine, I only downloaded the iCloud For Windows App. I didn't do anything low level technical with Apple iCloud, like use Regedit against it. I do have a lot of Development tools like Visual Studio and MS Sql and Oracle on my machine but I wouldn't think those would interact with Apple iCloud. I did try to use the mounted iCloud drive and noticed that it had some problems. I don't think the initial install of Apple iCloud caused the problem, but some use of Apple iCloud going forward encountered a problem and messed things up after that. But uninstalling Apple iCloud fixed everything. I like Apple. I am a technical person and have a Mac and other Apple equipment. But these problems are serious and if you are having them try uninstalling Apple iCloud for Windows if you have it.1.1KViews1like3CommentsRe: stopping a Pin signin loop, How to get a user login?
KapilArya You are right about Services. That said, I was using Services to try to debug a problem where File Explorer wouldn't refresh (you'd delete a file and it would still show in file explorer). I actually did try to turn off all non-Microsoft services one time and it didn't fix the File Explorer problem. What did fix the File Explorer problem for me was to uninstall iCloud for Windows. Of all the non-Microsoft Services none of them showed Apple as the Vendor. iCloud for Windows is an "App". Is there some Service that starts all the App's?3.4KViews0likes1CommentRe: stopping a Pin signin loop, How to get a user login?
KapilArya I was looking at msconfig Services this morning and I see why a lot of people are having this problem. One Microsoft tech thread had 1000+ “I’m having this problem too” on the pin loop situation. Services has a “Disable All” option and it is my contention if you have Pin enabled and you Disable All Services you put yourself in a very bad situation (can’t sign in with the pin you know and you can’t reach any other login options). Disable All is easy to do and I’m sure most people think they can’t hurt themselves by choosing it. I know this recovery thumb fix doesn’t show profound understanding of the underlying components. I got out of the Partition selector because I wanted to look some things up about it, not because I thought the next login was going to give me a user prompt. But the general theme here is if you are having this pin problem try a bunch of different boot cycle options to see if you can wake up the userid login one time. I know that at least the first time going in and out of the Command Prompt login woke the userid login option for me. It makes some sense to me that connecting to a thumb recovery drive might disrupt the pin only boot cycle. I like Pin but after these problems I wanted to turn it off because losing the whole machine is high cost. In my opinion it’s almost impossible to turn the Pin prompt off once it’s set up. My Windows Hello is turned off and Windows is still demanding a pin at signin. One benefit of toggling Windows Hello off is that Userid Options icon came back to my signon screen after I toggled it off, incredibly important. One other thought about getting out of this problem. If you are using Windows 10 Pro or Enterprise I’m almost positive Remote Desktop will demand a userid login, not a pin login. It didn’t help in my situation because I have Norton Firewall on by default and it blocks the port (I turn the firewall off when I want to use Remote Desktop).3.5KViews0likes3CommentsRe: stopping a Pin signin loop, How to get a user login?
KapilArya Ok, a miracle has happened (and miracles are rare in our business). I got control of the machine again. This is what I did. I have a relatively healthy (the only problem was the pin loop) win 10 pro machine and I had made a recovery thumb drive earlier. So I: - Did Shift Restart and picked the Use a Device option - I had a Windows recovery thumb drive made from this machine earlier in a usb port - I picked USB Drive UEFI - I picked "Advanced" Restore - then it was asking which partition I wanted to install windows on. At this I killed the partition window with the x and rebooted the machine. - the next login prompt was a user prompt. I logged back in and turned all Services back on and tried to turn Pin prompt off. After that I had control of the machine again through reboot/power cycles.3.5KViews0likes5CommentsRe: stopping a Pin signin loop, How to get a user login?
KapilArya , Thanks, I won't spend a lot more time trying to fix this. Just for the sake of others I did notice that going in and out Command Prompt, running notepad and taskmgr from the command line, turned regular userid sign on for on a one time basis. This lulled me and I thought I had a fix for the pin loop problem. I learned to my chagrin that it only works once for some reason.3.5KViews0likes0Commentsstopping a Pin signin loop, How to get a user login?
Hi, I shutoff all Services on my win 10 pro laptop to debug something. Now the machine is in a Pin signin loop. I assume the Pin auth process was a service and now it's not running. I can signon to Command Prompt, I can run notepad, taskmgr, and regedit but not msconfig or settings. Can anyone think of a way I could force a Windows User signon the next login with mostly just command line tools?3.7KViews0likes8Comments
Recent Blog Articles
No content to show