Password forgotten long ago

A elderly neighbor allowed the Windows 10 upgrade from a Windows 7 machine.
After the upgrade all seemed ok until a restart.
Apparently the original user account was set not to require a login and the password was long forgotten.
After the upgrade and restart the password was again required.
The guy didn't create a password recovery disk.
The user has a valid Microsoft account but the login wants the local account.
Because it was a online upgrade the owner doesn't have a Windows 10 disk.
Any way to switch to the online account without the local user account login?

I don't know if this will work or not, but it is worth a try:

From the login screen, click the power icon in lower right. Hold down the shift key and click restart. That will put you into the troubleshooting menu. Then I think you click Troubleshoot, Advanced Options, See More Recovery Options, Go back to the previous build.

That will go back to Windows 7, hopefully, and he can either create a new administrator account in Windows 7, or possible change the existing user password that he doesn't know. To be safe, before attempting to mess with the existing user account, I would create a new administrator account first.

NavyLCDR said:

I don't know if this will work or not, but it is worth a try:

From the login screen, click the power icon in lower right. Hold down the shift key and click restart. That will put you into the troubleshooting menu. Then I think you click Troubleshoot, Advanced Options, See More Recovery Options, Go back to the previous build.

That will go back to Windows 7, hopefully, and he can either create a new administrator account in Windows 7, or possible change the existing user password that he doesn't know. To be safe, before attempting to mess with the existing user account, I would create a new administrator account first.

Tried that but it requires a login to do it

I think he's probably pretty much locked out, then. If nobody else can come up with a solution, this is what I would recommend, there are a couple of options :

If you/he has an external storage device with enough space to hold all the used capacity on his hard drive:
On your computer, install Macrium Reflect Free and create a Rescue USB/DIsk. You'll need an empty 4gb USB flash drive or DVD. Boot his computer from the Rescue USB/Disk and create an image of his hard drive to the external storage device.

Or, if you don't have external storage device, but plenty of free space on his hard drive, you will want to download the MiniTool Partition Wizard Free bootable CD ISO file and create a bootable USB/DVD. Boot his computer from that and shrink the existing operating system partition by enough to create empty space big enough to hold at least 90% of the used space on the operating system partition. Create a new NTFS partition in the empty space. Then go back to the previous step, make a Macrium Reflect Free Rescue disk and make an image of the operating system partition saved to the new, empty partition you created.

Then you will use the Media Creation Tool to create a Windows 10 installation USB/DVD. Boot from that, select Install Now, then Custom Install. Click on the current operating system partition and reformat it. That will erase everything on it, that's why you make the image first. Then clean install Windows 10 to the newly formatted empty partition. Create a new account after Windows 10 is installed, and you can use the Microsoft account login if you want to or a local account.

Install Macrium Reflect Free. "Explore" the image file you created, check the box for "allow access to restricted files/folders". Then he can copy over his data files from it. All his apps and programs will have to be installed from scratch, though.

Hi Bobbywires! Try to use the free software NTPASS which can remove local password. But you need to install NTPASS to a CD or USB drive using another computer you have access to.

Before I was able to try NTPASS the neighbor paid a local shop to role his PC back to Windows 7.
I think Microsoft has made a serious error in the Windows 10 upgrade.
1. The admin password should be required to start the upgrade.
2. Users should be warned to make a note of the Microsoft Account's password before creating one in Windows 10 because the next login requires the account's password. And you have to be logged it to change back to the local user.

I have had 3 friends call me in panic after the Windows 10 blitzkrieg convinced them to make the change.
The lack of web information on these issues seems to missing from the Microsoft FAQ's

Thank you for your help on this matter.