Seriously?
Hi guys
Many of you were ditched into “free Windows 10” upgrade from your Windows 7 & 8 and I am sure few out there chose to link their existing local accounts with a Microsoft account (live, outlook and err hotmail accounts)
I have four computers (including my work laptop) running Windows 10 and the 10 years old HP micro tower PC that works as a home theater is my guinea pig for all Windows insider tests.
Windows insider program made it sure that the insider logs on to the computer using a Microsoft account, most probably for the headcount? Anyway they do let the user hook up a live account when the insider program is turned on inside Windows update advanced area. Yet demand the user to logon to the computer using Microsoft account must be for usage statistics.
Anyway, “trusting” Microsoft’s long “proven” privacy protection shit, I agreed to link my local account with my windows insider id and upgraded the box to latest build (Anniversary build? with linux sub-system)
Came the fun, I was told my device was offline so the password cannot be checked and the network connection status icon over the logon screen showed that the connectivity were broken
After few minutes of struggle I remembered that I had my daughter’s account added as family member and quickly managed to logon to the box and the network connection fixed itself (Should be a bug?)
I tried to switch the user account to my local account that is linked to a microsoft account, and I was able to.
So what was going wrong?
A family account (Microsoft account) was able to logon to the box without a live internet connection
A local account linked to Microsoft account was blocked because there were no internet accesses
I am sure I was damn lucky to have another account available with the box to log and to let the connection repair itself & I am yet to come across a valid explanation towards the annoying issues like my experience above.
However, I figured out a way to address such situations by unhooking the local account from Microsoft account, yet to continue receiving the insider builds.
I added my Windows insider Microsoft account as “Other Users” and changed the account type as “Administrator”. (You need to verify this account on the box by validating the account at later stages) Not only this has addressed the issues with device being offline and being locked out, I realized I can add accounts under the family and use the family safety finally against the child accounts!
Actually logging on to a computer using ONLY a Microsoft account is a very bad idea incase if you are using your primary account. Anyone (family) who knows the PIN or password that you set for the Microsoft access will able to access your mails and other sensitive information without additional efforts as everything is linked and many places they won’t have to logon to explicitly to access the information.
Hope you will not be locked out of your box, after reading this post :)
regards,