Windows 10 Password issue  

Hi, was the login a local account, or linked to a MS Live Id?

A PIN is just a frill in the sense that the password is still required in a number of situaitions normally, as perhaps you have discovered.

Here members recommend the routine use of disk imaging so that users can recover quickly and painlessly from many bad situations - e.g. Macrium Reflect (free). I'm going to guess no such precautions are in place.

Lenovo Yoga 530 - seems to be from around 2018, so is fairly new.

Was System Restore enabled?

Presumably it boots normally to a login screen wher e you are prompted to log in.
What indicates there are no user accounts?

If you click on the Power button on that screen, bottom right, then SHIFT left click the Restart option, you would normally be able to navigate to an option to boot to Safe Mode.

Does it get that far?

As it seems to use an MS live id account you can reset that by logging in to the MS account.. assuming that you can do that of course. See e.g. the last option:

Reset Password of User Account in Windows 10

If you're missing an admin account, if desperate, see the last option
Enable or Disable Elevated Administrator account in Windows 10

I agree with dalchina.

Enable the BuiltIn Admin account,
use that to create additional*** password-protected local Admin accounts,
write their passwords down somewhere secure yet accessible,
log in to one of the new accounts,
check it works,
check it can give Admin permission properly [right-click on the Start button, select Windows PowerShell Admin and click on the Yes button in the dialog that appears - then close PowerShell as this was just a check of the procedure],
then disable the BuiltIn Admin account.

Once all that is working, you can worry about sorting out the problem with the original account in slower time.
- I've seen changes in an online MSAccount password cause problems logging in to the computer before. In my case, the problems disappeared eventually - I guess that changes to the online account are just awkward about filtering down to the computer.
- If you do not actually need MSAccount facilities within your user account then just stick with local accounts. They have fewer moving parts to go wrong.

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Add Local Account or Microsoft Account - TenForumsTutorials
Change to Admin account type- TenForumsTutorials

Reduce the chances of your accounts being afflicted with user profile corruption by never forcefully powering off the computer unless the thing freezes up completely leaving you with no choice.

• Never turn it off forcefully by holding down the power button for several seconds [as opposed to just pressing it for a moment then letting go], and
• Never turn it off by removing its power supply, and
• Never turn it off while Windows update is trying to install updates.

Write their passwords down somewhere secure yet readily accessible. Writing down their passwords is as effective as & is a lot cheaper than making 'Password reset disks' [which are only for local accounts anyway]. I always write user account passwords down on a piece of paper that I keep inside one of those dog nametag cylinder things attached to my main keyring -

Here's a [UK] link for some example ID tags https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pet-Barrel-.../dp/B00DEB1JVQ There are lots of available choices but I bought ones that, like these, have a slot in the bottom for me to swing off so I can be confident they won't come apart accidentally while I'm out & about.

*** I always create two additional i.e. spare password-protected local Admin user accounts.
- I created one and I use it routinely for fault investigation. This means that my day-to-day account does not have any unnecessary additional access permissions and this limits how far malware could spread if you were infected.
- I created the second because it occurred to me that, since I was using the first spare one sometimes, I might mess it up. I appreciate that this is probably overkill. I have never used the second one so its profile should never be corrupted.

Denis

jimmy243 said:

… 2. why does every single recovery option require a password ...

Jimmy,

They don't. Use Enable or Disable Elevated Administrator account in Windows 10 Option 5

Denis

If you can't do that for some reason, can you not log in to the account on line on any PC, using a browser, and reset the password? (As previously posted).

Otherwise you need to back up any non-backed up data on the PC and clean install.

Then, lesson learnt, start using disk imaging regularly so you can recover from disasters.

Sounds good. The difficulty may be getting your son to routinely use disk imaging...

But watch out- he'll be getting his friends to visit the neighbourhood geek...