Windows 10: Cannot log into WIndows 10 machine -user accounts problem

HELP! Really would appreciate any help anyone can offer - so screwed.

A while back I wanted our PC to turn on and load up Windows without requiring a password.

I followed these guidelines:

How to Skip the Windows 10 Login Screen

It didn't work. Worse than that, like this guy, it also deleted my administrator account.

This meant I couldn't install any programs.

I have just tried fixing that problem, and tried to set up a new local account.

I have restarted my PC and the sign in screen features one account - my email address preceded by .\

ie, it looks like

.\myname@email.com

No pin works.

When I put in my pin for my usual account it says

"Your password was changed on a different device. You must sign in to this device once with your new password, and then you can sign in with your PIN."

None of my passwords work either.

There are no options to switch user.

Can anyone suggest any way forward?

Apart from this machine, I currently only have access to a Chromebook.

Microsoft website states I cannot create a bootable USB unless I use a Windows machine. Given how poor Windows is (how can you accidentally delete an Admin account, or not be able to log in!) surely at least, they need to concede it is likely you will need a machine running a more solid OS to fix their rubbish.

Thanks massively for any help.

:)

 

Win10 cannot login to domain accounts

I have a dozen computers that are running Win8.1 that authenticate to a Win2012R2 server with no problems. I have now installed fresh Windows 10 installations on four machines. I can log onto these machines locally or with a Domain admin account but cannot
log on with any domain user accounts. The error I get up is "The user profile service failed the sign-up. User profile cannot be loaded".

I have seen plenty of fixes for this error on local profiles but none on domain ones. The Win10 machines do not have the user profiles on them as they fail to authenticate to the server so there is nothing delete.

I have one Win10 machine that does work fine but as they were all installed using the same image I can't see what the problem/solution is.

Any ideas?

 

Windows 10 Start Menu, Search and Task switcher not functioning after joining a domain

After joining my windows 10 pro machine to a server 2012R2 domain,, I cannot access the start menu, search or task switcher when logging in as a domain user (or domain admin). If I log in as a LOCAL user or with my @outlook.com account, everything works
fine.

 

If no better solution, you may be able to sort this out by restoring the backup copy of your registry - which requires booting from an external bootable medium. But that may have been overwritten now.

You could try System Restore, launched by booting from a Win 10 bootable medium.

You can download iso's from several places, including MS Techbench.

(See e.g.
Windows 10 Recovery Tools - Bootable Rescue Disk - Windows 10 Forums
post #3

What I don't know is whether you can then do the equivalent of the following from your machine:

Creating a bootable USB drive.

with thanks to @NavyLCDR
To reliably make a bootable USB flash drive from an ISO file, do this:

Plug the drive into a USB port of a functioning Windows PC.

Open a command prompt.
Run diskpart.

Once diskpart is running, enter the following commands in sequence:

list disk
select disk #
- replace # with the actual disk number of the USB flash drive
clean
- this will erase the selected drive, make sure it is the USB flash drive!
create part pri
format fs=fat32 quick
active
exit
exit

Then mount your ISO file.
(By default you can simply right click the iso file, and click Mount. However, Mount will not be available if iso files have been associated with a different program).

Copy all the files and folders from the mounted ISO file to the USB flash drive.

(If stuck you can open the iso with 7-zip, a free program).

Discussion here:
Reinstall Windows 10 from DVD but no DVD drive[/U][/URL]
- includes content of flash drive.

--------------------------------------------------
Note: If you had been using disk imaging routinely as we constantly recommend, you could have recovered quite quickly without technical help.

E.g. Macrium reflect (free) + its boot medium + external storage for disk image sets

 

Restart the computer and hold down the Shift key.
This should take you to the Advanced boot menu where you can choose Troubleshooting and Safe Mode. Or do a System Restore to a time before this happened.

 

Thanks for the help.

I have loaded into safe mode. It asked for my administrator password (which I left blank, and which it accepts as blank - part of me wonders if this had been part of the problem).

In safe mode, under Control Panel>User Accounts, it only shows one user account - Administrator.

It won't let me set up any new users.

If I go to "Configure advanced user profile properties" it shows 4 entries:-

Default Profile
DESKTOP-NXCXXXX\Administrator
DESKTOP-NXCXXXX\defaultuser0
DESKTOP-NXCXXXX\Myfirstname

All of these are marked as "Status - Local". The first 3 are varying sizes - 1.53MB, 873KB and 57.6MB. The 4th is sowing as Size - ?

If I back out of that, and go into Control Panel>User Accounts>Manage Accounts it shows the one lone user account Administrator. If I select that account, I go to "Make Changes to Administrator's account".

There is an option to "create a password".

If I click on that it says "You are creating a password for Administrator. If you do this, Administrator will lose all EFS-encrypted files, personal certificates and stored passwords for websites or network resources."

Can anyone suggest how to proceed? I don't have access to another Windows machine at the moment and the machines I do have do not seem capable of producing boot USBs. System Restores in Windows have never gone that well for me in the past - yet another area where the OS seems clunky and flaky.

I'm loathe to do anything without double-checking because I don't want to go any further down this particular Microsoft and Windows rabbit hole! I really can't get over how poor Windows is for this to have happened.

 

Oh wow - just to add - I've just restarted without doing anything else or making any changes.

Now the login screen still only shows one account but that has changed to "Administrator" and when I click "Sign in" it says "Your account has been disabled. Please see your system administrator."

Genius. Great work Microsoft. Really. Top drawer.

 

OK, so I think I've come up with one solution (in case anyone else stumbles across this while in a similar predicament).

First off, I'm no expert, and Microsoft's woeful OS and non-existent customer service led me to follow instructions off the internet which led me into this mess, so proceed with caution...

At the log-in page, I held down "shift" whilst pressing "restart" and then selected "start up options, and then option 5 which was "safe mode with networking".

Once in safe mode I pressed Windows Key + R and typed lusrmgr.msc and pressed Enter to run it.

I then looked in the user profile of my usual profile, and it wasn't part of any groups.

I added it to the Administrators group, and restarted the PC.

On the log in screen I was able to log into my usual profile.

So, I think the problem was that somehow, as part of the circumstances leading up to the problem, Windows removed my user profile from all groups, and that was why the profile wasn't showing up as a user I could choose to log in as.

As I say I'm no expert, but the above has worked for me.

Shame on Microsoft I'd say for creating such an obtuse OS.