Moved to 2004; Microsoft and Office accounts are goofed up

First, about five weeks agoI posted "There is a problem with your Microsoft account" message which may have been a similar problem, and was eventually resolved by following the instruction at How To Stop The "Microsoft Account Problem" Notification | Bruceb Consulting

Then last week, I accepted Windows pushing me to Version 2004. That itself went smoothly enough, but starting the next day, I go through this unwanted thicket of nonsense that hadn't existed before, because I'm being given grief about my accounts. And I apologize because I've not yet documented exactly what the messages are.

Before going into that, part of my confusion stems from my continuing to not understand the purposes of the "Microsoft account" associated with the use of my PC, and the "Office account" associated with my use of Office apps. And though tenforums undoubtedly has hundreds of posts explaining this, I'd really appreciate an explanation here, that I might finally grasp.

For this computer (my work laptop), the "Microsoft account" is linked to my personal gmail address, since that's the address I probably use the most.

And, crazily, my work "Office account," which more logically would be linked to my work email address, is instead linked to an email address I use for my volunteer work with a local nonprofit. The reason for this is that initially when I got the computer, I used the nonprofit's free-to-NP online version of the Office suite. When I finally got and registered my own copy of Office, in the name of "it wasn't broke, so I won't fix it," I used the same email address.

Maybe I'm crazy, but this layer of associating email addresses to computers and to Office just adds a no-value, high-confusion element to things that is not welcome.

So, to my problem, documented non-specifically from memory.

I sign on to my computer, and in 10 seconds or so get an OS alert that there's something wrong with my Microsoft account, much like happened last month ("There is a problem with your Microsoft account" message).

I really don't get anywhere going the "fix this problem" route, and it tries to make me sign in using my personal address, which of course is associated with the computer.

Then when I open an Office app - Excel or Word typically - there's a little yellow triangle at the top of the window, saying there was a problem and I need to sign in again. Which I do, using my nonprofit credentials, and then at least that is fixed.

Somewhere along the line - I think it's when I do "fix this problem" - I get this error message:



Also, although How To Stop The "Microsoft Account Problem" Notification | Bruceb Consulting helped me last month, that no longer appears to be the case. "Nearby sharing" and "share across devices" are both turned off for me.

Again, no problems, then moved to Version 2004 (build 19041.508), and this tire fire has been happening ever since.

dalchina said:

Hi, some links on accounts:
Microsoft account - Wikipedia
https://www.microsoft.com/security/b...ndows-live-id/
Try this search:


TPM: seems associated with an Office sign-in problem:
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...0-4ab5cda58928

Okay, I will read up on the accounts, but am now carefully documenting what happened this morning.

Logged into my laptop. Didn't start a browser or anything. Just let it sit for ten minutes while I made a phone call, watered my planets, etc. Laptop was fine.

Started browser (firefox) and brought up a few sites I normally visit - personal and work webmail, and work google calendar. Nothing bad happened for two minutes.

With nothing bad having happened thus far, I started Excel.

Immediately got this showing up in Excel:



Then before I did anything else, this appeared at the bottom right of my screen:



So there appeared to be two choices, and I opted for the first one, signing out of Excel, versus the second one, "fixing" it in Shared Experiences settings.

I signed into Excel and got this:


The signin I used was the email address I use for Office on my work PC, which is my nonprofit email address (choice explained in original post). Before clicking OK, I unchecked the box saying "allow my organization to manage my device."

Upon clicking OK, there was one of Microsoft's standard visuals showing work going on in the cloud or somewhere. Then I got this:



Not sure what the "correlation ID" is, but it's different from the one I'd posted in the original post.

Upon clicking Continue, the following appeared overlaying the middle of my Excel window:



I picked "not now," and Excel and Word work, with the correct account. However, if I look at "Account" for either software, this is what I see on the left side:



Clicking "try again" just brings back the same message after a small interval. What "online services" am I missing? Best of my knowledge, I'm just using Office programs locally on my PC.

So in my system alerts, I went back to the



Clicking to fix brought this up:



Clicking "manage user accounts" brought this up:



The "Microsoft account" was my personal email linked to my user account on my PC. The "work or school account" was the nonprofit email linked to Office.

I went back to the prior screen and clicked Fix Now. This appeared, showing the "Microsoft account" - the personal one linked to my user account on the PC.



Entered the password, and this came up, with the "work or school account" email address, my nonprofit one linked to my Office suite:



I entered the password and this came up:



As shown, I unchecked the "allow my organization" checkbox and clicked OK. "Working" stuff happened, then this:



Clicked Continue, and this:



Not sure, but maybe the first time since last week (when I'd not have checked of course, since I had no problems), that "all accounts are working correctly" came up.

WOW. This is a lot to analyze! But I hope someone can read through this real-time recounting of my morning and make some sense of it. The whole sequence would probably have taken five minutes if I'd not been taking screen shots and giving the narrative of what happened.

And, again, this only started when I went to 2004. And "all" I'm after is just getting onto the computer and using it, without all this nagging about accounts and problems.

dalchina said:

Hi, not presently aware of an issue such as you describe with 2004, but may be a matter of a specific search.

Meanwhile I found these which may help: the second matches your screenshot with a keyset error:
https://social.technet.microsoft.com...-code-80090016
FIX: Your Computer’s Trusted Platform Module Has Malfunctioned 80090016


TPM upgrade:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...r-tpm-firmware
How To Easily Update TPM 1.2 to 2.0 using HP TPM Configuration Utility

That's funny, because the two links you shared, I'd looked at yesterday. I didn't want to mess with making a new user profile (if that's a solution, it usually suggests other bigger problems, I think), but I did yesterday use Device Manager to uninstall my TPM 2.0, then restarted yesterday, and things were fine.

However, for reasons I don't understand, often these user account problems are "solved" for some short span of time and don't reappear just because I've restarted. They usually appear after overnight. Although one day last week I was back on my computer after three hours and they reappeared.

I have an update though from today. Everything was working fine, but when I came back to Excel after a lot of browsing, the blue "signin required' message was back across the screen. I signed in (using my Office/nonprofit email address), and checked, and now there were connected online services:



Settings > system > shared experiences also is still telling me all accounts are working correctly.

By the way, another maybe material thing. I do use Outlook in my browser for my nonprofit free O365, and that has never never never had a problem, even when I'm being asked to sign in to my local copies of O365. I do not use a local-based version of Outlook. And my work email is through google's GSuite platform.

dalchina said:

Do you have TPM listed as a device in Device Manager as one of those shows?

Looks like it:



I will note any quirky things that happen today (hopefully none!), and then, fingers crossed, report back tomorrow that I got off to a good start. I don't feel like I did any signing in any differently today than before, but I'd never carefully documented the sequence until this morning.

dalchina said:

That seems to be up to date (I have 1.2).

And when I uninstalled it yesterday, it was 2.0 that day too. Having never heard of TPM until this debacle began, I don't know what version I'd had, pre-2004.

- - - Updated - - -

dalchina said:

There are one or two ideas other than creating a new account there. Agree, sometimes odd things happen with MS accounts..

Do you have TPM listed as a device in Device Manager as one of those shows?

Okay, everything looked good yesterday, but today, back to the same old stuff.

I deliberately waited about two minutes after signing in to my PC (it's an HP laptop, HP ProBook 450 G5 15.6" LCD Notebook - Intel Core i5 (8th Gen) i5-8250U Quad-core (4 Core) 1.60 GHz - 8 GB DDR4 SDRAM - 256 GB SSD). About 75 seconds in, the Microsoft account problem, and invitation to fix, popped up:



When I did that - going from memory; didn't document as well today - I got the "work or school" account warning:



Logged into that, and then the same thing that popped up on top of my Excel yesterday popped onto the screen, although this time I'd not started anything - no Office, no Browser. Just in Windows, on my desktop, with no software running that I'd started.



So I took care of that via this (unchecking the allow to manage my device box):



And then everything was right. Probably took less than two minutes to bull through.

But this is a silly exercise to perform each morning, when it was working right just a week ago.

Could my TPM somehow be messed up?

I read https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c05792935 and How To Easily Update TPM 1.2 to 2.0 using HP TPM Configuration Utility (note that I already have TPM 2.0, and likely had it when the laptop was new).

Here's the TPM information from device security:



Maybe I'm barking in the wrong direction, but:

1. If TPM adjustment/tweaking is the way to go, what would be the suggested steps? Remember, I already removed TPM via device manager, and had it reinstalled on restart.
2. If the problem is not TPM, then what step-by-step might be recommended?