Turn On or Off Password Protected Sharing in Windows 10  

Brink said:

Did she switch from a local account to a Microsoft account before this happened?

If so, that might explain the user ID and name change.

That's possible, Brink. She is pretty confused about what happened and how she got here.

If so, how can I check, and how would she switch back to a local account? ...Because if what you say is the case, and I understand correctly, restoring the computer to an earlier date might not restore her to a local account if this is something propagated from MS servers.

Thanks,
Michael

Is there no way to "undo" the credentialing change? Or would it be possible to change the MS credential from FIRSTNAME LASTNAME to just FIRSTNAME, and would it just work then as before? Or would she now have to use whatever password she has on MS to get access to her computer? I'm not sure that is going to be as easy to remember as the old USER password.

Michael

UPDATE:

So, I suppose this was almost inevitable,...both of us delayed, because though I wanted to act quickly since I could see that MS was getting ready to install updates on the computer, I had a lot to do today and needed to be out much of the day; meanwhile, my wife was anxious to complete some other stuff on the computer. So we could not find a time to work on this together. Wouldn't you know it, the computer went outsides of "Active Hours," updated and restarted itself, and then asked for the password to sign into the account. She did not know the password, or have it handy. After a good deal of angst, freaking out, etc., she finally found the password with another computer, and we were able to log her in. LIVE AND LEARN.

For anyone who might come across this thread and have a similar problem, the answer to the question, "How do you switch back to a LOCAL account?" (--remember, I was not even aware that there is now a choice between a LOCAL Account and a MS Account to sign in) is here:

Switch to Local Account in Windows 10

Settings/Accounts/Your info

If you are already on a Local Account, this gives you the option of signing in with a Microsoft account instead. I don't understand why anyone would want to do that, because it seems to be giving MS even more control of your computer. I guess the benefit is syncing data, but you can do similar with Google if you want. If you are currently using a Microsoft Account, as my wife was inadvertently (and I still don't know what she did to change it), there is a choice to switch to a Local Account. Hence, we were able to restore the Local Account to her computer. ...Peace Reins again in our house.

Michael

I cannot seem to turn off that "Password Protected Sharing", I turn it off, there is no prompting from windows about it, and when I re-open it, it's turned back on.

And to make things more idiotic, there is only 1 user account on the machine and it has no password, yet attempting to access the shares on this machine using the username without any password gets denied.

Things just got weirder, I opened both Guest and the Current user in the Computer Management, ensured that the "Password never expires" was checked on each, and now I can access the shared folders from the network.

Now, the shares all have the "Everyone" on the permissions list, plus Everyone has Read/Write access to the shared items.

And yes, the Account is administrator.

Plus the "Required password" checkbox is now set to "nope" and I did not do much else.