Windows 10: What happens to Windows 10 login should MS servers go down?

Hypothetical question but logging into Windows 10 is heavily reliant on the MS account and I wonder what would occur if MS servers were down (or maybe your own ISP is having problems)?

We always get met with a login screen as we have several family users (all MS accounts as opposed to local). I presume on login there is some kind of handshake/authentication with MS servers? But what happens if the MS server was down for any reason? I assume it would still login ok and in effect act as a local account - would the login pause/stay on 'logging in' for a set time waiting for a MS response before timing out after a set period?

it only got me thinking because my wife logged in earlier. Normally after a couple of seconds she's on the desktop but earlier on it took a bit longer on the 'logging in' phase - it wasn't anything to write home about, say 10 - 20 secs. But it got me wondering whether on this occasion she was just the victim of a sluggish MS server response or something like that. We did test again a bit later on and she was back to logging in within a second or two.

:)

 

What's this option in Windows Update

I let this process happen once to see what would happen. It left the PC in an unfamiliar login in screen and prompt that not acceptable to me because others who use the PC would not understand what was going on. This login in screen is what MS needed
to explain.

 

Performance issues with Microsoft account on Windows 10 Laptop.

Hello, this really needs addressing, I am convinced ms servers are too blame. The same symptoms all persist even after the latest cumulative updates. Virtually all non MS services stripped back (I check what services are running via task scheduler and there
are no services stuck or running other than the usual MS ones) whilst we are suffering the delays. Sfc /scannow also reports a clean bill of health. I don't believe a repair install will help at all as the same problem will continued if it is MS server related.
That will be a long waste of time I have not really got to spare.

everything seems to be a bit of a mess for MS related Internet traffic, for example we have another laptop running Windows 7 and since patch Tuesday it is stuck on checking for updates for hours and hours. This is a side note to the main issue but shows
all is not well with the MS servers - of that I am convinced. You are making the MS accounts unusable by refusing to investigate what I believe are either severely overloaded or 'sick' servers. It's not as if the MS related data doesn't work but it is incredibly
slow. Loading store, cortana to show interests, apps to login that are linked to an ms account ie, photos, groove, films and tv. It is intermittent but does happen with great regularity and when it happens can take anywhere from 10 to 40 minutes for everything
to login or cortana to finally show interests. Even logging into our ms accounts in edge or IE11 can take ages to load, but edge and IE11 run perfect for everything else. And for our poor son using a child account both IE and edge are unusable as they take
minutes to become active, presumably as the tracking of his internet activity is linked to ms account related login, therefore it stumbles. He can use Mozilla as a workaround but that's beside the point

The experience is pushing our family towards dumping Microsoft products and levitating towards rival competitors. Windows 10 has been a real dissapointment to our family. I want to give it a chance but you can understand my frustration at an issue that has
gone on for weeks, especially as it seems MS servers are to blame. Just for the record speedtest.net on all browsers and all user accounts on the laptop is 56 m/bits sec down and 13 mbit/sec upload so there is no router or ISP problem. The problem lies squarely
with Microsoft end. MS is pushing hard to get Windows 10 onto people's machines but how can MS expect it to become accepted and popular with issues like this. The OS is getting a bit of a bad rap and I am thinking it's not without foundation. The potential
is there and aesthetically it looks nice but the most important thing should be functionality and to be able to use it as intended. Something which is not happening for our family.

Also for the record my login used on here to report in this thread is NOT my main MS account which I use as head of family for the laptop. I want to stress this to avoid confusion. Not that I think it's relevant but I will be happy to share my and my family
ms account email / login ID details if required. But as I've mentioned a few times I don't think this is of relevance because I believe we are looking at MS server issues. Maybe a senior engineer can offer to remote into the laptop as this will confirm everything
I am telling you

Thanks, Wayne

 

An easy test is temporarily disable/disconnect your network connection and see how everything works.
For me, it's more likely my ISP service will go down, and i don't have any internet connection possible.

As a backup precaution, create a Local Admin account.
Then you can login in with that if something happens to MS servers/accounts and no-one can login with a MS account.
You can have it PW protected where only you know the PW, so you can do whatever needed in case of emergency.

 

Scotty...you could test that scenario. Shutdown. power off. Unplug the Ethernet or if on WiFi, turn off the router. No possible connection (unless you hit a neighbors WiFi lol). Power back up...see what happens!

 

Ok thanks to you both, yes I do have a local admin account that we never use as another way in.

i just wondered if anyone had any experience of what happens - I was hesitant to test the scenario in case it had any side effects. I might take a recent system image first before trying this out.

 

Periodically log in with the Local account to make sure it still works.

I had a situation once where a MS account was getting errors and warnings.
The local account worked without any problems.
It was a pita to fix the MS account, it took me several hours.
That was with 8.1, but such things can happen.
I agree, backup images are important and i do them regularly.
Unfortunately, restoring a backup image would not fix a problem with a MS account (for me).

Turned out it is a bug, and the MS account had to be "fixed".