Recovering from unrecognized PIN for user account tied to gmail

n2ubp · 22 Dec 2019

I'm wondering if there is a better way to recover from this situation.

A neighbor asked for my help.
He uses a HP AMD based all in one computer that came with Windows 8.1 and years ago upgraded to Windows 10.
He uses a PIN to logon.
His Windows account is based on his gmail e-mail address.
Last week Windows performed an auto version update to 1903.
I don't know what version he was running before 1903 was installed.
After the version update he could no longer logon with his PIN.
He says he got an error message about an invalid PIN and his password would not work either.
He tried the standard reset process and got nowhere.
I suspect this is because he used a gmail e-mail account instead of a Microsoft e-mail account.

I ended up booting from a Windows 10 install USB flash drive, renaming utilman.exe, replacing it with a copy of cmd.exe,
rebooting from the hard drive, bringing up the command prompt at the logon screen, using the net command to create a new local admin level account, rebooting again and signing onto the new local account, then copying everything in the old gmail account Users folder to the new admin account.

This worked, but I was wondering if there is a better, easier way to recover from this situation if I ever run into it in the future.

Thank you,
Steve
73 de N2UBP

Caledon Ken · 22 Dec 2019

Not sure if better but I think I would have headed to

accounts.microsoft.com

and reset his password using forgot password. You would enter his gmail address as the account name. Assuming he properly populated recovery information you should have been able to get a reset code. (through phone or gmail email )

I wish MS had not let people use any email address as there MS account as people get confused and insist on using the gmail address not understand it is just a "Name" and both organizations have their own authentication process (individual passwords) and reset processes.