Windows 10: PIN not available and password not recognized - any suggestions?

My computer was running slow, so I tried to log in using safe mode - but when I get to the standard windows login screen, it stated "Something happened and your PIN isn't available. Click to set up your PIN again." I switched to the Microsoft password option, but it won't recognize my password - the one that is otherwise happily accepted here in my Microsoft account. When I try "I forgot my password" - even though I haven't - it just reverts back to the login screen displaying the time and date, with no further action.


I've tried restarting in safe mode with/without networking, but nothing seems to be working - at one point having repeatedly tried my password I received a system error message connected to silhost.exe stating "the system detected an overrun of a stack-based buffer".


Rolling the system back doesn't work as my password isn't accepted, and the DELL hardware recovery repair doesn't want to run Instant Restore diagnostics because apparently the disk layout has changed - it falls at the first hurdle of "partition table".


Can anyone suggest anything short of a total system restore? Thank you!

:)

 

Clear "Pin suggested" list in People Bar

Does anybody know how to clear the "Pin suggested" list on the "People bar"?

Contacts are added to the "Pin suggested" list once you've pinned and unpinned them. But there seems to be no obvious way to remove them from that list.

After playing around with this feature and pinning and unpinning many dummy contacts, it's rather annoying to see them in the "Pin suggested" list when you click on the "My People" icon in the taskbar.

 

Microsoft Account PIN and password

We appreciate the screenshot that you provided. to start troubleshooting the issue with you logins, we suggest that you follow the steps below on how login pin goes back to password:

• Click Start menu and go to Settings.
• In Settings, click the Accounts icon.
• Click on Sign-in options.
• Change both your password and pin one by one.

Let us know how it goes.

 

Clear "Pin suggested" list in People Bar

Thanks Josey Wales,

I can pin and unpin People contacts to the taskbar without problems, but these contacts will still show up on the "Pin suggested" list. It's this list I want to clear, because some contacts or double and some are dummy contacts. It's not that big of a deal, but it's rather annoying to have them suggested to me.