Something happened and your PIN isn't available. Click to set up your PIN again

[timeshifter]

Customer had this error on his relatively new HP laptop running Windows 11 "Something happened and your PIN isn't available. Click to set up your PIN again". When you clicked it would fail, don't recall the exact error.

I made progress using solution 1 below:

Unable to logon to Windows with message: "Something happened and your PIN isn't available. Click to set up your PIN again."

This happened to me last night and I want to document it here so that hopefully someone else won't have to spend 3 hours trying to fix it through trial and error, or worse, have to "Reset my PC" or reinstall, which I was very close to doing before I solved it. Then later, I recreated the problem ...

linustechtips.com

After doing that procedure I was able to choose to sign in with password. Of course the customer didn't remember the password. I could click the link that says "I forgot my password" or whatever. The screen would clear like it was going to the next step, but then the screen would refresh again and we're right back to where we started. No errors or anything.

Note that we also reset his Microsoft Account password earlier in the day so I could get the Bitlocker key to boot to a RE with command prompt. I figured I could simply use the forgot password when we were trying to sign in and it would go online and see the new password. I presume it was trying to go online and then fail because it didn't know my WiFi at all and I never saw any indication that it was connected.

Also, at his house it behaved the same. I was hoping it was already connected to his WiFi.

Solution 2 in that link talks about setting some networking services to startup. Maybe that's the problem? No network services are running so it's not going to reach out to MS servers to find the new password?

 

[britechguy]

If you already reset the password on his Microsoft account, and that's the same Microsoft account that is linked to the Win11 user account, you do not need to use the Forgot Password process on the PC. Just enter what you know to be the freshly changed password and IF THERE IS INTERNET CONNECTIVITY it will query the Microsoft server and, if it matches what's there, you are logged in and that password replaces whatever happened to have been stored locally.

You must be connected to the internet to use the Forgot Password process, as it is intimately intertwined with the Microsoft Account and will open same as part of that reset process.

If you are having WiFi issues then try ethernet to the router.

 

[timeshifter]

I’ve tried the new password already. No go. Pretty sure it doesn’t have Internet. Maybe it’s a Windows 11 thing but there is no icon on the sign in screen indicating a Wi-Fi or Ethernet connection, like I’m used to seeing on windows 10.

There is no ethernet port on the computer, only USB ports. I plugged in a USB – C adapter, but I’m not sure it recognized it.

 

[britechguy]

Maybe it’s a Windows 11 thing but there is no icon on the sign in screen indicating a Wi-Fi or Ethernet connection, like I’m used to seeing on windows 10.

I'll have to look on my Windows 11 machine. I thought there was, but it's just too easy to conflate Windows 10 and Windows 11 because so much is common to both.

This is another reason that I try, I don't always succeed, but I try to keep users from using a PIN. You really do need to know your password, and this is a perfect example of why. And if a PIN has been set up and there is an, "I forgot my password," incident it's far more likely that will be remembered "in a pinch" than an unused password will.

 

[Sky-Knight]

But if you forgot your password you use another machine at worst to recover the account, then go use it on the box that's having issues.

That is... if and only if that unit can get online. That last rub is substantial.

 

[timeshifter]

I just tried Solution 2 in that link where you set lots of the network related services to 2 (automatic), they were at 4 (disabled). Didn’t make a difference.

On the Lock Screen it shows the time and date in the middle near the top. There’s one icon in the bottom right for the battery.

When I get to the screen to enter the password the only icons on the bottom right are the power and an icon for accessibility. No network indicator.

When I click “I forgot my password” it says “Just a moment…” with the spinning dots, the screen goes black (like it’s doing something) then it comes immediately back to the lock screen.

 

[britechguy]

That last rub is substantial.

I'd say critical. I've already stated my opinion on PINs and the general, industry wide discouraging of the use of passwords (and I'm not trying to get into at 2FA thing here - I mean setting up everything such that actually having to enter a password is essentially a thing of the past). We have trained people to be insanely lazy with the keys to their kingdoms. Browser password memory features being the worst "bad training" of the lot.

This whole incident would likely not be occurring had that user been entering their password to get into Windows 11 as a routine thing.

I don't know of any way out of this situation, given everything that's been offered so far, if an internet connection cannot be established. The PIN is dead, the local password that remains whatever it was prior to the change on the Microsoft Account is unknown, and the fetching of the new password from the Microsoft Account is impossible without an internet connection.

This could end up being a situation where a nuke and pave is easier.

I have checked my Win11 machine and there is definitely a network icon on the login screen, using the standard "world globe with 'no' icon" when there is not WiFi connectivity and the "radiating shell" form when there is. The fact that this is missing on this machine suggests to me a WiFi card malfunction of some sort, and if ethernet connectivity is not an option, and this cannot be fixed otherwise, you're up the proverbial creek without a paddle.

 

[timeshifter]

Can I just use a password reset disk?

I think I have one that I’ve used to fix a Microsoft account before. I tried to boot it (may not have been the correct ISO) but couldn’t get it to boot. Probably not a good ISO for a secure boot UEFI system.

 

[timeshifter]

Or you could just do a System Restore and put in the old PIN when it comes back

Which is what I just did. And it worked.

 

[britechguy]

Or you could just do a System Restore and put in the old PIN when it comes back

And how, precisely, did you do this?

I've never done one unless I've been able to log in first, or else if I have, it's been so long that I have no idea of what I did.

Addendum: As of the moment, the password on that machine is whatever it was PRIOR TO the reset of the Microsoft Account. You must log in using the new password, with internet connectivity, once before that gets replaced with the new one. It gets fetched and stored locally on first use and confirmation from the Microsoft server. So if you want the password to be the new one, definitely log in once using it.

 

[Sky-Knight]

Access to the system restore is available via the recovery partition, or the USB installation media, both work.

 

[timeshifter]

When logging on to the machine I can only enter a PIN. There is no choice to enter a password and nothing to click on for sign in options like I'm familiar with in Windows 10. Is that a Windows 11 thing or do I still have a bug?

 

[britechguy]

Access to the system restore is available via the recovery partition, or the USB installation media, both work.

Thanks. Useful to know.

Over time, I have come to hate System Restore because it's just so darned inconsistent. But, I always keep it on, and when it does what it's supposed to do it's just marvelous.

 

[Porthos]

https://appuals.com/your-pin-is-no-longer-available-windows-11/ ????

 

[Sky-Knight]

All of the causes from the link above remind us all... Pin based login, is the same as biometric login in Windows 11 / 10 when you're using TPM + Secure Boot. That is to say, these PINs are run against the TPM to access the token needed for login.

So all the security updates that can cause you to need a recovery key? Yeah, they can ALSO screw up the local PIN login mechanism, and yes you have to fall back to the password.

Which in the business world is fine because you can just reset it, but in the home user world... not to much.

 

[timeshifter]

When logging on to the machine I can only enter a PIN. There is no choice to enter a password and nothing to click on for sign in options like I'm familiar with in Windows 10. Is that a Windows 11 thing or do I still have a bug?

So do you guys agree that I still have a bug with this system if I'm only presented with the option for a PIN and no way to enter password?

 

[Rigo]

When logging on to the machine I can only enter a PIN. There is no choice to enter a password and nothing to click on for sign in options like I'm familiar with in Windows 10. Is that a Windows 11 thing or do I still have a bug?

I've come across cases (HP machines) where password was not required prior to setting a PIN when first setting the computer. The user was offered to setup a PIN so there was no password. And the weird thing was that the PINs were valid to access network shares
Fortunately I did encounter a need to reset a PIN without a supporting password

 

[John Kennedy]

Glad you were able to fix with a system restore. As stated by others, it's super inconsistent, but it never hurts to keep it enabled and use it as a hail mary solution.
As for the rest of the problem, I'm with the others on the PIN login thing, but I'll go a step further and say I try to make sure users never use a Microsoft Account as their only sign-in. I know Microsoft makes it super difficult for an average user to figure out how to create a user without a Microsoft Account, but as long as I can get to them early enough, I'll either help them through that or switch them to a new user account that's local. In case you didn't know, there's no way to reset a password on a Microsoft Account using anything other than an internet connection. The classic tools of booting from a boot disk and messing with local user passwords doesn't work. Yes, it's less secure as a result, but bitlocker pretty much covers that security hole anyway (no bitlocker key, no way to open the disk to change the password in the first place).

 

[britechguy]

So do you guys agree that I still have a bug with this system if I'm only presented with the option for a PIN and no way to enter password?

Yes.

You should always at least have the option to switch between PIN and Password if both are set for a given account. I'll double check again later today to be absolutely sure. It's also very odd that you have no WiFi status indicator on the login screen, too.

 

[nlinecomputers]

So what happens if you deliberately enter the wrong PIN number? After 4 or 5 tries it’s supposed to force a password login.