“Something happened and your pin isn’t available.”

[VanillaSpooks]

I disabled secure boot so I could dual boot windows and Linux, but now my windows will not let me log in. 
 

I get “Something happened and your PIN isn’t available. Click to set up your PIN again” 

 

when I try to set it up again it takes me to my Microsoft account log in, but I can’t log in because Microsoft has decided to put “oops something went wrong, so we decided to lock your account for security reasons”

 

please if you have any ideas to fix this, I’ve tried secure boot and restoring to a previous save, doesn’t work. I have all of my family’s and my photos from the past 10 years on here…

[TetraSky]

If it's just to get your pictures off it... You could get them from Linux, no ? Simply install the thing to access NTFS file system and you should be able to get them.

 

I had that issue before, had to use command line to enable the Administrator account.

Here's a Reddit post that explains how to do it. 

https://www.reddit.com/r/WindowsHelp/comments/zzqog6/comment/j2dbg2p/

 

[Vishera]

Secure Boot stores a PIN code in the UEFI, If you reset CMOS or disable Secure Boot the PIN code will be deleted from the UEFI.

That's why i always have Secure Boot disabled.

 

There is a copy of the PIN code in the Microsoft account you used for installing Windows - That's how you retrieve it (but you will have to turn on Secure Boot for it to work).

[Alex Atkin UK]

1 hour ago, Vishera said:

Secure Boot stores a PIN code in the UEFI, If you reset CMOS or disable Secure Boot the PIN code will be deleted from the UEFI.

That's why i always have Secure Boot disabled.

 

There is a copy of the PIN code in the Microsoft account you used for installing Windows - That's how you retrieve it (but you will have to turn on Secure Boot for it to work).

Strange, I've toggled secure boot off before and never run into this.  Although I use Fedora so technically don't need to turn it off.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

3 hours ago, VanillaSpooks said:

I have all of my family’s and my photos from the past 10 years on here

once you recover the photos make sure to make multiple different backups like one on a random (portable) hdd/ssd, another in the cloud, etc. just so theres multiple places where if one or a few fail your photos arent all gone just like that

 

learned that the hard way myself but i was a kid and i didnt know how to backup photos, now the phone the photo is on refuses to boot into the os so i might have to go to a data recovery center if all else fails (swapping battery, swapping board into diff working phone, etc.)