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Unable to logon to Windows with message: "Something happened and your PIN isn't available. Click to set up your PIN again."

ramava
By ramava
in Windows
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Go to solution Solved by ramava,

This happened to me last night and I want to document it here so that hopefully someone else won't have to spend 3 hours trying to fix it through trial and error, or worse, have to "Reset my PC" or reinstall, which I was very close to doing before I solved it. Then later, I recreated the problem on a virtual machine  of a fresh Windows 10 install to see which thing I did actually fixed it and discovered another potential problem that people may encounter. This may not solve the problem completely if it was originally caused by something different than my problem, but hopefully it'll be a good head start for those people.

 

The Problem:

The problem is caused by a sign-in setting for Microsoft accounts in later builds of Windows 10 that prevents you from using a regular password to logon, but doesn't work at all if the services that make Windows Hello work aren't running. This setting is enabled by default.

 

THDrKnU.png

 

For me, this happened because I enabled Diagnostic Startup in msconfig. This disabled all the required services and then I couldn't logon because the only account on the computer was made using a Microsoft Account instead of a local account.

 

WHMh7BC.png

 

After pressing ok and rebooting, I was presented with this:

 

aMPvaEF.png

 

The Solution:

First, hold down Shift while pressing restart on the logon screen. This will bring up the Recovery options on reboot.

dQSdeY0.png

 

Click Troubleshoot -> Advanced Options -> Command Prompt.

 

lKYGaGd.png

 

elpIgMC.png

 

GSIZlpv.png

 

You may be asked to log in at this point, which I think depends on your which build of Windows it is. It did use the password and didn't seem to have any trouble on the one machine that required me to do it. The much newer preview build never asked for one.

 

Run regedit.

 

kX4aEFC.png

 

This will bring up the registry for the recovery environment (WinRE), not your install of Windows. So you have to manually load the registry hive to be able to edit them. To do that, first select HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, then select File -> Load Hive... from the menu.

 

VnQdFst.png

 

The hive files will be in C:\Windows\System32\config (or in the case of one of my computers, it was E:\). Load the SOFTWARE hive file. It will ask you for a name. I normally just use an extra s in front of the name, but it really doesn't matter as long as it's not something that's already there. This will give us a new listing under HKLM. My instructions will assume you name them ssoftware and ssystem like I do.

(Note: Don't use the version on the X:\ drive. It's the registry from the stripped down version of Windows that you're currently using to fix this.)

 

TKt0Wlt.png

 

ZpUpy7C.png

 

Solution #1:

Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ssoftware\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\PasswordLess\Device. There there is a key for DevicePasswordLessBuildVersion. Change the value from 2 to 0. This will turn off that "Require Windows Hello" setting.

 

Now reboot. If you're lucky, you can now logon with your password, and then hopefully fix whatever is causing the issue. In my case, it was just going back to Normal Startup in msconfig.

 

If it tells you that your password is incorrect (even though it's the right password), that means the password has never actually been used before and we have to do some extra steps.

 

Solution #2:

To make this work, we need to enable some logon services for Microsoft Accounts and make sure network access is enabled by enabling services.

 

Reboot back to the WinRE command prompt and open regedit again. This time, we'll load the SYSTEM hive as ssystem.

 

Under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ssystem\ControlSet001\Services, we're going to go to each service and edit the Start key value. For reference, the valid values for startup type here are:

  • 0: Boot
  • 1: System
  • 2: Automatic
  • 3: Manual
  • 4: Disabled

cTYiPKF.png

 

The short name is where you'll find it in the registry, in parenthesis is the long name for it. Some of these may seem unnecessary, but they are dependencies for other services.

 

These services need to be set to Manual startup (Start = 3):

  • lmhosts                (TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper)
  • Netman                (Network Connections)
  • VaultSvc            (Credential Manager)
  • Wecsvc                (Windows Event Collector)
  • WbioSrvc            (Windows Biometric Serviced)
  • wlidsvc                (Microsoft Account Sign-in Assistant)

And these services need to be set to Automatic startup (Start = 2):

  • Dhcp                    (DHCP Client)
  • EventLog                (Windows Event Log)
  • EventSystem            (COM+ Event System)
  • LanmanServer            (Server)
  • LanmanWorkstation        (Workstation)
  • NlaSvc                (Network Location Awareness)
  • nsi                    (Network Store Interface Service)
  • SamSs                    (Security Accounts Manager)

Reboot. Hopefully, Windows will now be able to contact Microsoft's servers and validate your password so you can logon.

Posted (edited)
  • Solution

This happened to me last night and I want to document it here so that hopefully someone else won't have to spend 3 hours trying to fix it through trial and error, or worse, have to "Reset my PC" or reinstall, which I was very close to doing before I solved it. Then later, I recreated the problem on a virtual machine  of a fresh Windows 10 install to see which thing I did actually fixed it and discovered another potential problem that people may encounter. This may not solve the problem completely if it was originally caused by something different than my problem, but hopefully it'll be a good head start for those people.

 

The Problem:

The problem is caused by a sign-in setting for Microsoft accounts in later builds of Windows 10 that prevents you from using a regular password to logon, but doesn't work at all if the services that make Windows Hello work aren't running. This setting is enabled by default.

 

THDrKnU.png

 

For me, this happened because I enabled Diagnostic Startup in msconfig. This disabled all the required services and then I couldn't logon because the only account on the computer was made using a Microsoft Account instead of a local account.

 

WHMh7BC.png

 

After pressing ok and rebooting, I was presented with this:

 

aMPvaEF.png

 

The Solution:

First, hold down Shift while pressing restart on the logon screen. This will bring up the Recovery options on reboot.

dQSdeY0.png

 

Click Troubleshoot -> Advanced Options -> Command Prompt.

 

lKYGaGd.png

 

elpIgMC.png

 

GSIZlpv.png

 

You may be asked to log in at this point, which I think depends on your which build of Windows it is. It did use the password and didn't seem to have any trouble on the one machine that required me to do it. The much newer preview build never asked for one.

 

Run regedit.

 

kX4aEFC.png

 

This will bring up the registry for the recovery environment (WinRE), not your install of Windows. So you have to manually load the registry hive to be able to edit them. To do that, first select HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, then select File -> Load Hive... from the menu.

 

VnQdFst.png

 

The hive files will be in C:\Windows\System32\config (or in the case of one of my computers, it was E:\). Load the SOFTWARE hive file. It will ask you for a name. I normally just use an extra s in front of the name, but it really doesn't matter as long as it's not something that's already there. This will give us a new listing under HKLM. My instructions will assume you name them ssoftware and ssystem like I do.

(Note: Don't use the version on the X:\ drive. It's the registry from the stripped down version of Windows that you're currently using to fix this.)

 

TKt0Wlt.png

 

ZpUpy7C.png

 

Solution #1:

Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ssoftware\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\PasswordLess\Device. There there is a key for DevicePasswordLessBuildVersion. Change the value from 2 to 0. This will turn off that "Require Windows Hello" setting.

 

Now reboot. If you're lucky, you can now logon with your password, and then hopefully fix whatever is causing the issue. In my case, it was just going back to Normal Startup in msconfig.

 

If it tells you that your password is incorrect (even though it's the right password), that means the password has never actually been used before and we have to do some extra steps.

 

Solution #2:

To make this work, we need to enable some logon services for Microsoft Accounts and make sure network access is enabled by enabling services.

 

Reboot back to the WinRE command prompt and open regedit again. This time, we'll load the SYSTEM hive as ssystem.

 

Under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ssystem\ControlSet001\Services, we're going to go to each service and edit the Start key value. For reference, the valid values for startup type here are:

  • 0: Boot
  • 1: System
  • 2: Automatic
  • 3: Manual
  • 4: Disabled

cTYiPKF.png

 

The short name is where you'll find it in the registry, in parenthesis is the long name for it. Some of these may seem unnecessary, but they are dependencies for other services.

 

These services need to be set to Manual startup (Start = 3):

  • lmhosts                (TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper)
  • Netman                (Network Connections)
  • VaultSvc            (Credential Manager)
  • Wecsvc                (Windows Event Collector)
  • WbioSrvc            (Windows Biometric Serviced)
  • wlidsvc                (Microsoft Account Sign-in Assistant)

And these services need to be set to Automatic startup (Start = 2):

  • Dhcp                    (DHCP Client)
  • EventLog                (Windows Event Log)
  • EventSystem            (COM+ Event System)
  • LanmanServer            (Server)
  • LanmanWorkstation        (Workstation)
  • NlaSvc                (Network Location Awareness)
  • nsi                    (Network Store Interface Service)
  • SamSs                    (Security Accounts Manager)

Reboot. Hopefully, Windows will now be able to contact Microsoft's servers and validate your password so you can logon.

Edited by ramava
Added a note to help find the right registry files.
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  • 2 months later...
Posted

Thank you so freaking much! I spent like 2.5 hours solving this issue. You helped me a lot, this way I don't have to reset my pc. Best, simplest, most detailed solution. 

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  • 4 weeks later...
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On 6/6/2021 at 9:04 AM, ramava said:

This happened to me last night and I want to document it here so that hopefully someone else won't have to spend 3 hours trying to fix it through trial and error, or worse, have to "Reset my PC" or reinstall, which I was very close to doing before I solved it. Then later, I recreated the problem on a virtual machine  of a fresh Windows 10 install to see which thing I did actually fixed it and discovered another potential problem that people may encounter. This may not solve the problem completely if it was originally caused by something different than my problem, but hopefully it'll be a good head start for those people.

 

The Problem:

The problem is caused by a sign-in setting for Microsoft accounts in later builds of Windows 10 that prevents you from using a regular password to logon, but doesn't work at all if the services that make Windows Hello work aren't running. This setting is enabled by default.

 

THDrKnU.png

 

For me, this happened because I enabled Diagnostic Startup in msconfig. This disabled all the required services and then I couldn't logon because the only account on the computer was made using a Microsoft Account instead of a local account.

 

WHMh7BC.png

 

After pressing ok and rebooting, I was presented with this:

 

aMPvaEF.png

 

The Solution:

First, hold down Shift while pressing restart on the logon screen. This will bring up the Recovery options on reboot.

dQSdeY0.png

 

Click Troubleshoot -> Advanced Options -> Command Prompt.

 

lKYGaGd.png

 

elpIgMC.png

 

GSIZlpv.png

 

You may be asked to log in at this point, which I think depends on your which build of Windows it is. It did use the password and didn't seem to have any trouble on the one machine that required me to do it. The much newer preview build never asked for one.

 

Run regedit.

 

kX4aEFC.png

 

This will bring up the registry for the recovery environment (WinRE), not your install of Windows. So you have to manually load the registry hive to be able to edit them. To do that, first select HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, then select File -> Load Hive... from the menu.

 

VnQdFst.png

 

The hive files will be in C:\Windows\System32\config (or in the case of one of my computers, it was E:\). Load the SOFTWARE hive file. It will ask you for a name. I normally just use an extra s in front of the name, but it really doesn't matter as long as it's not something that's already there. This will give us a new listing under HKLM. My instructions will assume you name them ssoftware and ssystem like I do.

 

TKt0Wlt.png

 

ZpUpy7C.png

 

Solution #1:

Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ssoftware\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\PasswordLess\Device. There there is a key for DevicePasswordLessBuildVersion. Change the value from 2 to 0. This will turn off that "Require Windows Hello" setting.

 

Now reboot. If you're lucky, you can now logon with your password, and then hopefully fix whatever is causing the issue. In my case, it was just going back to Normal Startup in msconfig.

 

If it tells you that your password is incorrect (even though it's the right password), that means the password has never actually been used before and we have to do some extra steps.

 

Solution #2:

To make this work, we need to enable some logon services for Microsoft Accounts and make sure network access is enabled by enabling services.

 

Reboot back to the WinRE command prompt and open regedit again. This time, we'll load the SYSTEM hive as ssystem.

 

Under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ssystem\ControlSet001\Services, we're going to go to each service and edit the Start key value. For reference, the valid values for startup type here are:

  • 0: Boot
  • 1: System
  • 2: Automatic
  • 3: Manual
  • 4: Disabled

cTYiPKF.png

 

The short name is where you'll find it in the registry, in parenthesis is the long name for it. Some of these may seem unnecessary, but they are dependencies for other services.

 

These services need to be set to Manual startup (Start = 3):

  • lmhosts                (TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper)
  • Netman                (Network Connections)
  • VaultSvc            (Credential Manager)
  • Wecsvc                (Windows Event Collector)
  • WbioSrvc            (Windows Biometric Serviced)
  • wlidsvc                (Microsoft Account Sign-in Assistant)

And these services need to be set to Automatic startup (Start = 2):

  • Dhcp                    (DHCP Client)
  • EventLog                (Windows Event Log)
  • EventSystem            (COM+ Event System)
  • LanmanServer            (Server)
  • LanmanWorkstation        (Workstation)
  • NlaSvc                (Network Location Awareness)
  • nsi                    (Network Store Interface Service)
  • SamSs                    (Security Accounts Manager)

Reboot. Hopefully, Windows will now be able to contact Microsoft's servers and validate your password so you can logon.

Hi there I know this is months old, but in having the same issue too, and crated an account in hopes I don't have to reset :((. I can't do a clean reset on my pc, I have important data on there I need to keep...

I tried your first solution, but it says the hive file is being used by another process so I went to solution 2. 

 

Does the small names not in parentheses mean the names of the folder in the services folder? That I Hive file I can load. If so, all I can find is Netman (3), DCHP (2), EventLog (2), LanmanServer (2), LanmanWorkstation (2), NlaSvc (2), NSI (2), SamSs (2). I put the start value of them in brackets next to them. I didn't not modify the values, and everything checks out with your solution. All I did was uninstalling afterburner because I was lagging in some games thinking it might be that, so restarted my pc thinkingni needed to do so after reinstalling afterburner. 

 

If you can't help that's OK, thank you so much anyways 

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18 minutes ago, WhyDoesTheWorzeHappenToMe said:

Does the small names not in parentheses mean the names of the folder in the services folder?

That's correct. That seems odd to me that you're not seeing them. Do you possibly see a ControlSet002 or something besides ControlSet001? I know there are things that will create another set of them, but I can't remember what would make you have more than 001.

 

(When you edit this on a properly booting PC, you'd be editing CurrentControlSet instead, which typically points to ControlSet001, but not necessarily.)

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  • 3 weeks later...
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5 minutes ago, Icantfixithelp said:

Hey I tried to do the solution 2 but it doesn’t show me ssoftware cause I can’t do the hive thing, it says in the error “Cannot load x:\windows\system32\config\SOFTWARE. The process cannot access the file because it is being user by another process” do you think you can help?

Make sure you're loading the one off the C:\ drive. The X:\ drive is not a real HD, but is the stripped down version of windows that you're using to fix it.

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Just now, ramava said:

Make sure you're loading the one off the C:\ drive. The X:\ drive is not a real HD, but is the stripped down version of windows that you're using to fix it.

Oh thank you.

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2 minutes ago, ramava said:

Make sure you're loading the one off the C:\ drive. The X:\ drive is not a real HD, but is the stripped down version of windows that you're using to fix it.

Worked, thank you so much.

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3 minutes ago, Icantfixithelp said:

Worked, thank you so much.

No problem. And I added a note to the original post to hopefully help the next person too.

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39 minutes ago, ramava said:

No problem. And I added a note to the original post to hopefully help the next person too.

Hey on solution 2, what number should I put on the start key? Also sorry to bother you.

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2 minutes ago, Icantfixithelp said:

Hey on solution 2, what number should I put on the start key? Also sorry to bother you.

The first list should be set to 3, the second list should be set to 2. And I don't mind. I'm just sitting here playing a mindless game.

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2 minutes ago, ramava said:

The first list should be set to 3, the second list should be set to 2. And I don't mind. I'm just sitting here playing a mindless game.

You’re a god. Thank you so much my problem is solved now.

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  • 3 weeks later...
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Hi,

 

I have the exact same problem and it's caused by the exact same reason (enabling diagnostic startup).

I managed to load the software hive, but unfortunately, it does not contain an entry called PasswordLess. Searching on Password doesn't give me anything useful.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

Cheers,

 

Ben

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On 11/3/2021 at 2:21 PM, MrEdge said:

Hi,

 

I have the exact same problem and it's caused by the exact same reason (enabling diagnostic startup).

I managed to load the software hive, but unfortunately, it does not contain an entry called PasswordLess. Searching on Password doesn't give me anything useful.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

Cheers,

 

Ben

Make sure you're not loading the hive from X:\. If it's missing, that's probably what happened.

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3 hours ago, ramava said:

Make sure you're not loading the hive from X:\. If it's missing, that's probably what happened.

No, I loaded it from C:\ as X:\ gave me the locked error. I think I might have a newer Windows version where they moved stuff around in the registry or something. 

The only thing I haven't tried yet is enabling the services for passwords as mentioned in Solution #2. Would that do anything despite not having the fix as mentioned in Solution #1?

 

(thanks for taking the time to reply btw, much appreciated!)

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Based on what I understand of it, enabling the services will probably still help because they're what let you log in with a password at all.

 

How were you logging in before? Were you using a PIN or a webcam or something else?

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On 11/5/2021 at 9:28 PM, ramava said:

Based on what I understand of it, enabling the services will probably still help because they're what let you log in with a password at all.

 

How were you logging in before? Were you using a PIN or a webcam or something else?

I was using a pin code to sign in. I don't understand why the PasswordLess entry doesn't show up in the registry. I even tried adding it, but that doesn't do anything.

I'll try to get the password services up and running and see whether that brings me something.

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On 11/8/2021 at 9:14 AM, MrEdge said:

I was using a pin code to sign in. I don't understand why the PasswordLess entry doesn't show up in the registry. I even tried adding it, but that doesn't do anything.

I'll try to get the password services up and running and see whether that brings me something.

Okay so I finally found out why the PasswordLess entry was missing from the registry. It kept bugging me. Somehow, booting into WinRE shuffles my harddrives around, making some old disk my C: drive. So I was looking at an ancient version of windows. I now loaded the registry hive from the E: drive and that fixed the problem. You're a saint, thank you so much!

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8 hours ago, MrEdge said:

Okay so I finally found out why the PasswordLess entry was missing from the registry. It kept bugging me. Somehow, booting into WinRE shuffles my harddrives around, making some old disk my C: drive. So I was looking at an ancient version of windows. I now loaded the registry hive from the E: drive and that fixed the problem. You're a saint, thank you so much!

That exact same thing happened to me the first time I did this. The second time was in a VM and on purpose to get all the instructions and screenshots, so everything was much more controlled and had only one drive.

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  • 2 months later...
Posted

Hello I know this is kinda old so I apologise in advance. Unfortunately it keeps saying that system file is in use by another process.

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  • 4 months later...
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Thank you so much! I don't know how you did it but you saved me buddy!

Also thanks to the guy in reddit who shared this link :D

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On 6/6/2021 at 11:04 AM, ramava said:

This happened to me last night and I want to document it here so that hopefully someone else won't have to spend 3 hours trying to fix it through trial and error, or worse, have to "Reset my PC" or reinstall, which I was very close to doing before I solved it. Then later, I recreated the problem on a virtual machine  of a fresh Windows 10 install to see which thing I did actually fixed it and discovered another potential problem that people may encounter. This may not solve the problem completely if it was originally caused by something different than my problem, but hopefully it'll be a good head start for those people.

 

The Problem:

The problem is caused by a sign-in setting for Microsoft accounts in later builds of Windows 10 that prevents you from using a regular password to logon, but doesn't work at all if the services that make Windows Hello work aren't running. This setting is enabled by default.

 

THDrKnU.png

 

For me, this happened because I enabled Diagnostic Startup in msconfig. This disabled all the required services and then I couldn't logon because the only account on the computer was made using a Microsoft Account instead of a local account.

 

WHMh7BC.png

 

After pressing ok and rebooting, I was presented with this:

 

aMPvaEF.png

 

The Solution:

First, hold down Shift while pressing restart on the logon screen. This will bring up the Recovery options on reboot.

dQSdeY0.png

 

Click Troubleshoot -> Advanced Options -> Command Prompt.

 

lKYGaGd.png

 

elpIgMC.png

 

GSIZlpv.png

 

You may be asked to log in at this point, which I think depends on your which build of Windows it is. It did use the password and didn't seem to have any trouble on the one machine that required me to do it. The much newer preview build never asked for one.

 

Run regedit.

 

kX4aEFC.png

 

This will bring up the registry for the recovery environment (WinRE), not your install of Windows. So you have to manually load the registry hive to be able to edit them. To do that, first select HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, then select File -> Load Hive... from the menu.

 

VnQdFst.png

 

The hive files will be in C:\Windows\System32\config (or in the case of one of my computers, it was E:\). Load the SOFTWARE hive file. It will ask you for a name. I normally just use an extra s in front of the name, but it really doesn't matter as long as it's not something that's already there. This will give us a new listing under HKLM. My instructions will assume you name them ssoftware and ssystem like I do.

(Note: Don't use the version on the X:\ drive. It's the registry from the stripped down version of Windows that you're currently using to fix this.)

 

TKt0Wlt.png

 

ZpUpy7C.png

 

Solution #1:

Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ssoftware\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\PasswordLess\Device. There there is a key for DevicePasswordLessBuildVersion. Change the value from 2 to 0. This will turn off that "Require Windows Hello" setting.

 

Now reboot. If you're lucky, you can now logon with your password, and then hopefully fix whatever is causing the issue. In my case, it was just going back to Normal Startup in msconfig.

 

If it tells you that your password is incorrect (even though it's the right password), that means the password has never actually been used before and we have to do some extra steps.

 

Solution #2:

To make this work, we need to enable some logon services for Microsoft Accounts and make sure network access is enabled by enabling services.

 

Reboot back to the WinRE command prompt and open regedit again. This time, we'll load the SYSTEM hive as ssystem.

 

Under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ssystem\ControlSet001\Services, we're going to go to each service and edit the Start key value. For reference, the valid values for startup type here are:

  • 0: Boot
  • 1: System
  • 2: Automatic
  • 3: Manual
  • 4: Disabled

cTYiPKF.png

 

The short name is where you'll find it in the registry, in parenthesis is the long name for it. Some of these may seem unnecessary, but they are dependencies for other services.

 

These services need to be set to Manual startup (Start = 3):

  • lmhosts                (TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper)
  • Netman                (Network Connections)
  • VaultSvc            (Credential Manager)
  • Wecsvc                (Windows Event Collector)
  • WbioSrvc            (Windows Biometric Serviced)
  • wlidsvc                (Microsoft Account Sign-in Assistant)

And these services need to be set to Automatic startup (Start = 2):

  • Dhcp                    (DHCP Client)
  • EventLog                (Windows Event Log)
  • EventSystem            (COM+ Event System)
  • LanmanServer            (Server)
  • LanmanWorkstation        (Workstation)
  • NlaSvc                (Network Location Awareness)
  • nsi                    (Network Store Interface Service)
  • SamSs                    (Security Accounts Manager)

Reboot. Hopefully, Windows will now be able to contact Microsoft's servers and validate your password so you can logon.

Hi, I've done all of this however I always goes back with the wifi not working properly. I have no connection and when I try to connect, there is no available connections only airplane mode. What can I do for this?

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I just had to register, to say thank you. This is by far the best resource I have found online for this issue.

One thing to note, is even if you can't execute Solution #1, try Solution #2.

In my case we didn't have the registry key available to execute Solution #1 (it literally was not there).

We executed only Solution #2, and it allowed us just enough access to get in using a password.

Once in, we enabled all the services again, and rebooted... Everything was back to normal then (including the pin)

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I tried both ways and i still get the same error about my pin not being there

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  • 1 month later...
Posted
On 6/6/2021 at 11:04 PM, ramava said:

This happened to me last night and I want to document it here so that hopefully someone else won't have to spend 3 hours trying to fix it through trial and error, or worse, have to "Reset my PC" or reinstall, which I was very close to doing before I solved it. Then later, I recreated the problem on a virtual machine  of a fresh Windows 10 install to see which thing I did actually fixed it and discovered another potential problem that people may encounter. This may not solve the problem completely if it was originally caused by something different than my problem, but hopefully it'll be a good head start for those people.

 

The Problem:

The problem is caused by a sign-in setting for Microsoft accounts in later builds of Windows 10 that prevents you from using a regular password to logon, but doesn't work at all if the services that make Windows Hello work aren't running. This setting is enabled by default.

 

THDrKnU.png

 

For me, this happened because I enabled Diagnostic Startup in msconfig. This disabled all the required services and then I couldn't logon because the only account on the computer was made using a Microsoft Account instead of a local account.

 

WHMh7BC.png

 

After pressing ok and rebooting, I was presented with this:

 

aMPvaEF.png

 

The Solution:

First, hold down Shift while pressing restart on the logon screen. This will bring up the Recovery options on reboot.

dQSdeY0.png

 

Click Troubleshoot -> Advanced Options -> Command Prompt.

 

lKYGaGd.png

 

elpIgMC.png

 

GSIZlpv.png

 

You may be asked to log in at this point, which I think depends on your which build of Windows it is. It did use the password and didn't seem to have any trouble on the one machine that required me to do it. The much newer preview build never asked for one.

 

Run regedit.

 

kX4aEFC.png

 

This will bring up the registry for the recovery environment (WinRE), not your install of Windows. So you have to manually load the registry hive to be able to edit them. To do that, first select HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, then select File -> Load Hive... from the menu.

 

VnQdFst.png

 

The hive files will be in C:\Windows\System32\config (or in the case of one of my computers, it was E:\). Load the SOFTWARE hive file. It will ask you for a name. I normally just use an extra s in front of the name, but it really doesn't matter as long as it's not something that's already there. This will give us a new listing under HKLM. My instructions will assume you name them ssoftware and ssystem like I do.

(Note: Don't use the version on the X:\ drive. It's the registry from the stripped down version of Windows that you're currently using to fix this.)

 

TKt0Wlt.png

 

ZpUpy7C.png

 

Solution #1:

Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ssoftware\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\PasswordLess\Device. There there is a key for DevicePasswordLessBuildVersion. Change the value from 2 to 0. This will turn off that "Require Windows Hello" setting.

 

Now reboot. If you're lucky, you can now logon with your password, and then hopefully fix whatever is causing the issue. In my case, it was just going back to Normal Startup in msconfig.

 

If it tells you that your password is incorrect (even though it's the right password), that means the password has never actually been used before and we have to do some extra steps.

 

Solution #2:

To make this work, we need to enable some logon services for Microsoft Accounts and make sure network access is enabled by enabling services.

 

Reboot back to the WinRE command prompt and open regedit again. This time, we'll load the SYSTEM hive as ssystem.

 

Under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ssystem\ControlSet001\Services, we're going to go to each service and edit the Start key value. For reference, the valid values for startup type here are:

  • 0: Boot
  • 1: System
  • 2: Automatic
  • 3: Manual
  • 4: Disabled

cTYiPKF.png

 

The short name is where you'll find it in the registry, in parenthesis is the long name for it. Some of these may seem unnecessary, but they are dependencies for other services.

 

These services need to be set to Manual startup (Start = 3):

  • lmhosts                (TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper)
  • Netman                (Network Connections)
  • VaultSvc            (Credential Manager)
  • Wecsvc                (Windows Event Collector)
  • WbioSrvc            (Windows Biometric Serviced)
  • wlidsvc                (Microsoft Account Sign-in Assistant)

And these services need to be set to Automatic startup (Start = 2):

  • Dhcp                    (DHCP Client)
  • EventLog                (Windows Event Log)
  • EventSystem            (COM+ Event System)
  • LanmanServer            (Server)
  • LanmanWorkstation        (Workstation)
  • NlaSvc                (Network Location Awareness)
  • nsi                    (Network Store Interface Service)
  • SamSs                    (Security Accounts Manager)

Reboot. Hopefully, Windows will now be able to contact Microsoft's servers and validate your password so you can logon.

I tried this and when I boot up it's just "is not responding"

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