Local Account / Microsoft Account Sign-In Issue

Brink said:

If there's a subkey under those in red with the same name as the email address, you would delete the subkey with the same email address name.

You would only delete the key in red above if there's a value for that key using the email address instead of subkey.

For example,

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\OneDrive\Accounts\Personal

does not have a subkey, but it has many entries for Name, Type, Data. One of the entries is:

UserEmail, REG_SZ, nobody@home.com (not actual email address)

You are instructing to delete only that one entry, and not the Personal subkey?

Brink said:

Correct.

I found another entry that has my email address:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Security Center\Provider\CBP\eb241a3a-1996-42fc-9cfb-fea23d252acc

It has ACCOUNTNAME REG_SZ nobody@home.com

I cannot delete it.

Brink said:

That would be a protected key.

It may be easier to create yourself a new local account, make it an admin, then delete the old account after copying anything you wanted over to the new one first.

I've read about doing that. It seems like an involved process, and I must also do it for my wife's non-admin account - it requires her MS sign-in now, also. Even though I have backups, I don't want to risk losing access to her account.

Do you have a step-by-step guide for doing that? I've been using PCs since the DOS days and built PCs, so I'm pretty comfortable with doing it if the instructions are clear.

Should I reboot to determine if the deletions resolved the issue or restore the registry and create new local accounts.

Thanks again for your help.

Brink said:

I'd say go ahead and restart to see if the deletes may have done the trick for you.

If not, then it's basically just creating a new local account on the PC with a different name for each of you.

Rebooted, but to no avail.

I will eventually create the new accounts per your guide. Right now the MS sign in is nothing more than a pia, so I'm not in a hurry.

Thanks!