rdp to windows 10: only 1 set of credentials works

Question

I can rdp from my windows 7 box to a windows 10 box on our intranet when I use one specific set of credentials (the credentials of the first account created on the server machine), but all other accounts fail. I have set up 2 other accounts on the RDP server machine, a gmail account and a hotmail account, both Administrators, and have verified that both credentials work fine when logging into microsoft.com; but both consistently fail with "Your credentials did not work" when I try and rdp into the machine.

In the rdp login dialog, I am using the following format in all cases:

[e-mail] (or [e-mail])
password

(with real values, of course)

The account that works is a hotmail.com acct, fwiw.

I have tried this at least a dozen times at this point, so it's not a matter of a misspelled pw.

I have also added my accounts to the list of Remote Desktop Users, and run

gpupdate /force

in a command prompt, and gotten the resulting

Computer Policy update has completed successfully.
User Policy update has completed successfully.

but still no success in remoting in.

Answer 1

Ok, so I went into Computer Management console, Computer Management (Local), System Tools, Local Users and Groups, Users and found that the actual username looks nothing like the email address windows 10 FORCES you to use when creating a new account. For example, I used "[e-mail]", and windows turned that into "my_us". Truncated the hotmail address to first 5 characters also. I also did a password change in the mgmt console. Finally, you have to put the name of the remote box plus backslash in front of the username. So the final, successful login (to the remote server "thatserver") is:

username: thatserver\my_us
pw: the_password

However, none of that was necessary for the original account. No idea why.

One final fun fact: I tried this on the other new account, the hotmail account, but did NOT set the password in management console, and it won't log in. Then I did change the pw in mgmt console, and it worked. So even tho windows forces you use an email account to create a new users (through control panel users), you still have to go in and deal with the "real" windows user account.