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At some point when I was installing apps from the Windows Store on a spare laptop, I'm pretty sure Microsoft asked me to create a Microsoft account for one of them, and unsurprisingly, without telling me, force-changed my local user account to a Microsoft account. This was a spare laptop, and I didn't want to use my primary email, so I created a dummy account with a gibberish password, thinking I would never need it again.
If I was able to log into the laptop with my local account, there'd be no problem, but I'm only given the option to log in with the Microsoft account I created, and there's no way I'm going to remember its password. What can I do to regain access to my laptop without re-installing Windows 10?
Drew
Posted 2017-01-27T02:08:53.117
Reputation: 1 809
Enable the built-in Administrator account, create a new user account, and take ownership of the old user's profile directory. Without the password to the account you can't regain access to your current account. It's not clear the reason you didn't create a dummy account with a real password. – Ramhound – 2017-01-27T02:28:16.697
"...and unsurprisingly, without telling me, force-changed my local user account to a Microsoft account." Your situation is understandably frustrating, but I have installed & configured a few hundred Windows 10 machines throughout the last two years, and I have never heard of this happening before now. – Run5k – 2017-01-27T03:26:58.760
@Ramhound "It's not clear the reason you didn't create a dummy account with a real password" Because I didn't think I'd ever use it again. The email I used is a bunch of random characters I mashed on the keyboard, so I imagine I did the same thing with the password (I've tried ones I've used in the past to no avail). – Drew – 2017-01-27T05:31:21.050
@Run5k Booted into command prompt to try to enable built-in administrator, but it's asking me to sign in with my MS account. It still shows the local account name "BadHardwareTest1", but logging in with my local password doesn't work: http://i.imgur.com/TJTb8Op.jpg
– Drew – 2017-01-27T05:40:18.470You can boot into the Advanced Startup. You just use an the WinRE on an installation disk. I submitted an answer that goes into detail on how to enable the built in Administrator the correct way – Ramhound – 2017-01-27T05:56:05.630