Windows 10: How secure are user files in Windows 10 local user account with password?

Windows 10 Home 21H2 19044.2006 Hi: These questions refer to Windows 10 PCs without Bitlocker or other drive encryption. On an older Windows OS, I used a password cracking tool to help a friend gain access to his laptop when he forgot his password. It was trivial to gain access. 1. Is it still so easy to gain access to an account under Windows 10? 2. Without cracking the password, is it possible to gain access to a user's files by removing the hard drive and using a drive interface? Will Windows permissions prevent that, or can someone take ownership of those files or use a non-Windows OS

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I can't rename my user account

Hello Owen,

Welcome to the Microsoft Community.

• 
  Are you using a Microsoft account or local account?
  

If you are using local account, I suggest you to follow the below steps to change the user name.

Please follow the steps to rename the user account in Windows 10.

a. In the search box, type user accounts and click on User Accounts.

b. Click on “Change your account name”

c. If it’s prompting for password please enter and click on Yes. If you do not have password click on Yes.

d. Enter the new user name.

e. Click on change name.

If you face any more issues while working with Windows do post on Microsoft Community Forum.

 

How to Change Microsoft user account to local user account

Hi Pchelpmenow,

At this situation, what I can suggest you is you have to convert the Microsoft user account to local user account.

• 
  Log to the system using her user account.
  
• 
  Go to settings and click on Accounts.
  
• 
  Click on Your email and accounts and click on
  Sign-in with a local account instead.
  
• 
  Enter the password, click on Next
  and follow the onscreen instruction to convert into local account.
  

Hope this helps. Let us know the result for further assistance.

Thank you.

 

Local Acct user and MS account user - sync them or merge them

If the local account is the one where you have most of your personal data, this is how I would do it:

• Sign in to your Microsoft account
  
• Copy all documents, pictures and other personal data from Microsoft account's user folders to corresponding folders in user Public (contents of MS account Documents folder to Public Documents folder and so on)
• Sign out from Microsoft account

Notice that above steps are only required if Microsoft account user folders contain data you want to keep. If its user folders are empty or do not contain anything worth saving, you can skip the above steps. Continue from below.

• Sign in to the local account
  
• Delete the Microsoft account (Option One in this tutorial)
• Switch your local account to a Microsoft account (tutorial)
• Copy the data backed up from old Microsoft account to Public folders to new Microsoft account in corresponding folders

That's it. Using the Public folders as temporary storage you will have none whatsoever file owner / permission issues later on.