"net user" in Windows 10 recovery environment does not recognise user accounts from local install

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Background: Local user account defaultuser100000 was manually disabled (via Computer Management), and upon restart, this laptop is now unable to even reach the login screen to select the account to login with, directly showing the error "This user can't sign in because this account is currently disabled." My everyday login profile is a different one.

My first thought is to re-enable defaultuser100000, and since I'm unable to login at all, it can only be done via command prompt from the recovery environment. However, when I try to "net user" to show the list of accounts, neither defaultuser100000 nor my everyday user account is listed. This is so even when I switched from X: to C: , where going into C:\Users does show these other accounts. (Additional thoughts - hostname retrieved from this cmd is also different from the hostname of my actual laptop, so I guess it's a segregated environment)

Is there any advice on how I can reactivate the local-install account via the recovery environment? Currently, I am waiting for my corporate helpdesk for assistance but since it may take some time, I'd like to try on my own first. Also, I'm simply curious as to what the solution might be :)

I found this thread (Reseting Vista Admin Password from Installation DIsk) from Vista days, but as I'm not prepared to use external tools (I'll let the corporate helpdesk do that if necessary), that is not a solution in this case.

Other info: - There is no restore point available to go back to - My computer is a corporate laptop, and it is possible to utilise Azure authentication. However, I don't use it as I still use a local account as my everyday login profile. I suspect the Azure part may be causing an "auto-routing" of authentication first to defaultuser100000, which is disabled

Edit: The suggested thread currently brings me to methods to activate the built-in admin account. However, this is not exactly the issue in my case because my everyday account (which is still active) has admin rights, and I believe I can also activate the built-in admin account using net user name /ACTIVE:YES (which is exactly what I wish to do for defaultuser100000), so reactivating admin account is not an issue.

BUT I can see how using the regedit may help. Is there anyway I can identify defaultuser100000 via the registry (as far as I can see the identifiers are not human-understandable), and edit the attributes to enable the account again?

scc

Posted 2019-11-07T01:38:32.267

Reputation: 1

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Possible duplicate of How to get rights of admin after I disabled all admin accounts in my computer

– Ramhound – 2019-11-07T03:05:08.960

@Ramhound Sorry, I should have replied via the comments too. Please see my Edit 1 above. A Google search brings up methods via registry to hide/unhide user accounts from login screen, but it's not the same as de/reactivating. Are there ways to enable an account that is not the built-in admin account via registry? – scc – 2019-11-07T10:52:04.620

No answers