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I turned on a laptop that's been dormant for a couple years, logged in. Once it had internet access, it complained that I needed to login again with my Microsoft account, as my Microsoft account password had changed since it was last online. I didn't have my account info handy, so I followed the prompts to create a local account instead. (That's fine... I didn't want that Microsoft account anyway.)

Upon clicking log out to sign in again, I can't sign in again. I just created the account, and am totally sure of the password I typed in (though I suppose it's possible a keyboard key was acting up or something... I did enter it and confirm it and this worked). When I try to sign-in now, it tells me the password is wrong.

I know how have access to my Microsoft account password. Is there any way to switch back to the regular Microsoft account login instead of the local account?

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  • Realistically, you would need to reset your password on the local account and then convert it to a Microsoft account. – Run5k Jan 31 '17 at 19:13
  • @Run5k Ok, thank you. Could you post that as an answer so I can accept it as the solution? – Brad Jan 31 '17 at 19:26
  • Well, I could easily author an answer for how to convert the local account to a Microsoft account, but I think that the crucial step is to reset the local account password and I can't take credit for that. I would simply "up-vote" the proposed password reset answer that worked for you. Thanks for the consideration, though! – Run5k Jan 31 '17 at 19:30
  • @Brad - There is also a duplicate on how to link your account to a MS Account (and how to unlink your account by the way). So submitting yet another answer on how to reset your local account's password wouldn't really be helpful. I have an answer how to do in my answer list. – Ramhound Jan 31 '17 at 19:32
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It seems that there is no way to sign in with a previously-used Microsoft account, once it has been "converted" to a local account.

The solution in my case was to unlock the Administrator account with chntpw on a Ubuntu Live USB drive.

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