An interesting problem with windows 10 login

Informal
1

So I have a customer that has windows 10 home installed and a live-id login which has gone screwy and she is unable to login and the setup new pin is also broken

I booted the machine with live linux and with a little bit of pokery enabled the local Administrator account (no password)

I can login with this administrator account and access the original user files which is a good thing

The question is can it be possible to convert the original account login from live-id to local so that she can login again with her main user account ?

I could create a new local account for her and transfer the files across but would prefer another solution

I’ve done a lot of searching but unable to find a solution, I’ve also been searching in the registry to see if there is a clue for the difference between a local and live-id account but failed to find anything

If anyone has a solution to this it would be amazing

Thanks

2

I think the real question is why the @hotmail login went wrong
maybe she has some kind of protection like 2FA
or she messed something up and the acc got locked

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3

thanks for the reply in answer to the 4 options you have posted

option 1) cannot revert the account back to local as it cannot login
option 2) I already unlocked the default Administrator account using linux and I am able to login and access files this way
option 3) Changing the pin is not possible as the I forgot my pin / setup new pin is not functional
option 4) Same issue as option 3

If I had more time I would look deeper into the windows registry and figure this out, I think for now I will just create a new user and transfer all the files across and then delete the old @live account

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I am a little confused

how many admin accs are there at the end?

you can always convert a working local admin acc to @live
in such a way that you change the login method from a simple password (or blank) or pin to live
and then you enter your email details, etc.

and forget the problematic one

when such an acc is created, win will create a new folder inside the USER dir

and you can then move via lin files somewhere further away as a backup
the only thing I think is that it is not easy to transfer some user files to another user, because they are probably hashed/tokenized and internally connected to a certain acc, so it can report that viewing is not allowed if the login does not match the user.

when I edit someone’s win
I always tell him never to use “my docs”
but to keep everything on some other non-system partition

Can she even log in to her email via the normal online way?

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thanks for your replys

I see this problem all the time where people forget their windows and their email passwords, never bothered to update their recovery email or phone numbers which now are no longer active and are stuck unable to reactivate anything

what ive done so far is
activate the windows built in but usually hidden “Administrator” user and logged in
created a new Admin account with the lady’s name and logged in
transferred the content of the original locked user to the new user
deleted the original locked user account
hidden the windows built in Adminstrator user

so now theres just the single user on the login screen, password is 1234 :smiley:

when I have the time I will revisit this problem on a virtual machine, see if theres an easy way to convert a microsoft online login to a local account (without access to email or pin reset)

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