Windows 10: How to remove Microsoft Account from the Hidden Administrator

What account you want to remove? A Windows 10 user account, or one of your additional accounts seen in your account page under Email, calendar and contacts or Accounts used by other apps?

EDIT: I saw you started your own thread here: I Can't Remove My Microsoft Account.Help Me - Windows 10 Forums

As your issue has nothing to do with the topic in this thread, I think it's better we continue there.

 

I am totally pissed. I did a restore point about 8 hrs ago and now I have to redo that 8 hours. My mistake was using Microsoft edge and signing in to my microsoft account. Not knowing why they wanted my Admin password I entered it. Big mistake. I login always as Administrator and will not run Windows any other way. This is totaly a big screw up that microsoft has made and I am really ready to go back to 7. I want complete control of my PC and don't like the "no options in Windows updates" either. I use Firefox and don't need any Microsoft aplications other than Office. So quit with the built in stuff. Thank you for the 2 pages of denial before you beleived this poor guy.

 

Hi Kari,

Thank you for your explanation which is very comforting as I was confronted with the same issue.

My PC had been upgraded from Win 7 to Windows 10 and when I linked my Windows 10 license to my Microsoft account, I ended up with the Admin account being converted to a Microsoft account. There was no way to revert this account to the local Administrator account except for reverting Windows to the last restore point - which I successfully did.

And why did my Admin account turn into a Microsoft account? Because I followed Ten Forum suggest similar steps. However, this will switch your local account to a Microsoft account on your Windows 10 PC.

Internet forums are full of users struggling to revert this step, here and here, for example. So maybe it's a feature not a bug.

Now I know that a safer way to link your Windows 10 license to your Microsoft account is to create a new local account first.

 

Of course the more interesting issue for anyone trapped in this black hole is whether MS will ever provide some way to actually convert a built-in administrator account in this situation back to a local account.

I'm in no mood to throw away years of profile configuration. In the meantime, I've created a new administrator account and copied everything I could from my built-in administrator account trapped in the MSA black-hole. I'll just live without MSA until they can bail me out of the black hole they created.

 

It's you who have created this black hole, not Microsoft. The built-in admin account is not, has never been and will never be meant to be used as a normal user account. It should remain as a special account, remain disabled most of the time and only enabled when really needed.

 

But it's just so much easier to blame Microsoft for EVERYTHING! *Redcarded

 

Of course, everything depends on perspective — what you see depends on where you sit. I know the reasons for not using the built-in administrator account to do day-to-day work on a Windows computer. Yet I have done so consistently since XP. So perhaps I am at fault here although I still find it disingenuous that Microsoft would provide no way for Windows users with administrator privileges to escape this blackhole. After all, although I was familiar with all the classic reasons why I should not use the built-in administrator account, I tend to be obsessively careful about my exposure to hacking on any account.

I would suspect that those unfamiliar with the dangers of using the built-in administrator account, or even unclear about the distinction between the built-in administrator account and other administrator accounts, would have a different perspective — particularly if they were lured into making their built-in administrator account an MSA in Windows 7 and then got locked into this problem in Windows 10 at the time they upgraded.

I remain convinced that the decent thing for Microsoft to do is to provide a way out for those trapped in this situation — and suggesting a clean install, reverting to a long-since disappeared restore point, or even back to Windows 7 or something of that nature doesn't seem much help at this stage of the game.

 

First, switching built-in admin to Microsoft account is possible only in one scenario: Windows 7 user using built-in admin account as user account upgrades to Windows 10, and in OOBE setup selects to sign in with Microsoft account instead of local account.

If this user setups Windows 10 with normal user account, not switching the Windows 7 existing built-in admin account to Windows 10 Microsoft account, it's no longer possible to switch built-in admin to Microsoft accounts. The option is simply missing:




Built-in admin account really should not be used as daily user account. It's simple like that.

It seems that many of those users thinking they know all the risks, "familiar with the dangers", stating they know what they are doing really do not know enough. I cannot see how an issue caused by doing something that Microsoft has warned against for years, using built-in admin as normal user account, can be Microsoft's fault?

You only "remain trapped" when and if you have from beginning done against clear instructions. Windows, whatever version is meant to be used and administered with a local admin account, built-in account being enabled and used only on special circumstances.

Only solution for this issue caused by users themselves is to go back to Windows Seven, create a local admin account, disable built-in admin, sign in to local admin and then upgrade to Windows 10, or alternatively clean install Windows 10.

For me, this sounds just funny:

 

Alright, that is your perspective — for today at least. I really don't think that your sardonic parody contributes much that is useful to the discussion. The fact is that Microsoft left open the possibility for this substantial inconvenience to occur for users who chose to use the built-in administrator account. As of September 10 of last year, at least, you seemed to view this inadvertent “loophole” on the part of Microsoft as quite a serious problem, so serious in fact, that it merited fixing in the near future.

You really can't have it both ways — either this is a serious loophole that Microsoft ought to remedy, and if so, I would suggest that they should provide a comprehensive remedy that would allow us reprobates who dared to use the built-in administrator account for day-to-day work over a succession of Windows releases including Windows 7 to exit MSA in that profile in Windows 10 in addition to blocking the possibility of this problem occurring again for any persons who might belatedly update from Windows 7 to Windows 10 at this stage, although that seems an increasingly unlikely scenario in any case.

 

There seems to be a wide spread consensus among "I'm Pro, I know what I am doing" pseudo-geeks on this topic here on Ten Forums and other tech sites around the Interwebs: If someone points out that the issue an OP has is totally caused by OP's own wrongdoings, you are not allowed to mention it. If you do, it's like you said "sardonic".

How else should this matter be talked about? This specific issue for instance, it can only occur when Windows is used in a non-recommend way, if a special user account meant for specific problem solving situations is against all possible warnings, recommendations and against common sense used as a daily user account.

When I am trying to point this out, it's "sardonic".

In this case, OP has done wrong and caused the issue by him / herself. As so often when Windows is used in ways it's not intended to be used, clean install is the best solution. What in that is Microsoft's fault?

 

Really,

I am really not interested in pursuing this exchange of flames any further. It has become quite puerile and is at this point, in my opinion, a waste of time and bandwidth. My only point in engaging in this thread was hope that I might add some emphasis to your original position that "... [this] loophole ... is so bad that I am sure that Microsoft will fix this in the near future" and to encourage Microsoft to provide a comprehensive resolution to this problem if and when it did so. Really, having my operating system logged into my Microsoft Account provides little value added to my day-to-day work in any case so I am simply going to do what I have been doing for some time now which is continue to work happily in a non-built-in administrator account on the machine in question. This problem does not affect my other (laptop) machines in any case. Hopefully Microsoft will provide a graceful exit from this problem. If not, I am certainly not going to waste any more time or angst on it.

 

Whoa, just when you thought Windows couldn't get an weirder, something like this comes along. My heart goes out to the OP for having to wrap his head around this massive miscegenation. I hope a clean install brings the relief you need, and performance and stability improvements as an added bonus.
Best wishes,
--Ed--

PS to Kari: I'm amazed at how deeply you can see into the mysterious minds of the makers of Windows. Zounds!

 

Well, Ed think about this....

There are billions of combinations of different tweaks that users will come up with to do. There are billion of different combinations of hardware. When a specific combination of user tweaks or combination of hardware just doesn't work it's only because it would be impossible for Microsoft to foresee every combinations of actions that a user would do or combination of hardware that a user would put together. So, I think a more accurate phrase might be, "Just when you think a user couldn't do anything weirder...."

 

This is a weird one and I can't really blame Microsoft for not spotting it was possible. I do blame them however for not spotting that users would downgrade their one and only administrator account to a standard user (for 'safety') then wonder why they couldn't manage their PC any more - that one has cropped up on these boards more times than I've had hot lunches.

 

As usual, NavyLCDR, you hit the nail squarely and decisively on the head. I was thinking something very much like your response to my post while writing what I did. And indeed the permutations and combinations are enormous, which of course increases the odds that something bizarre and unlikely -- like this case -- will show up. As Donald Fagan said in his song The Nightfly "I wait all night for calls like these..."
Keep up the good work!
--Ed--