A
aHumanError
I've often thought that security comes at a price, the very things implemented to protect you or your data become hard work when something goes wrong.
My laptop is pretty new and I had been having a few minor problems that I couldn't fix, to most people they're not issues but I knew they were there and I think all things like that should work, I suppose I'm stubborn and work-arounds are not an option.. so after many alleys of troubleshooting, asking for help and attempts to fix I decided to reinstall Windows start a fresh and see if it solves anything; since I've done this many times before it doesn't bother me much.
I downloaded the Media Creation Tool and set up my USB drive. Since all my data is on separate drives & partitions there wasn't anything else I needed to do; lets go.
I installed Windows pretty fast, chucked all my drivers on and installed updates & my password manager - thinking about how much good time I'm making in the process. I just had to Install the Pro pack, and then my software. I added my Microsoft account to download Pro and installed that.
And this is where I made my mistake.
I forgot to remove or disable my Microsoft account; I restarted to finish up installing Pro then got asked to log into my Microsoft account instead of a local one. Well I don't know my password... I only created that account purely for the benefit of Windows since they're annoyingly adamant it HAS to be a Microsoft one. I thought there had to be a way around this. Reluctant to mess about recovering the email I tried turning my Wifi off temporarily, restarted the laptop and it STILL wanted you to sign in! "You need access to the internet to do that".
How much of a stupid option is this? Unless I was missing something pretty obvious this is the single most stupid idea ever. Use your Microsoft account to log into Windows where you're limited to home. What if you take your laptop to a friends, coffee shop or anywhere you need to connect to a new Wifi? In this situation you simply can't an you're locked out! I just cannot believe it didn't offer local access without internet.
I figured that if I could get access to safe mode surely you had local access and I could change the login type there. So restarting & entering "Advanced Options"... or as I like to call them "Ridiculously-over-complicated-menu-system-just-to-access-safe-mode" I got stuck again. I got prompted to enter a BitLocker recovery key, and I have no clue why it was asking me this since my boot drive was NOT encrypted with BitLocker. I manage to "skip this drive" (so presumably it prompted me because my data drive was BitLocker enabled... which still doesn't make sense) only for it to ask me again! My boot drive wasn't set up with Bitlocker but I simply could not progress past this.
At this point I was so frustrated I just wiped it and reinstalled Windows yet again; this time making sure I remember to remove the dumb Microsoft account.
But as a final f-you it still wasn't finished with me. I noticed one of my partitions on my boot drive was locked with BitLocker... I tried to access it and it was requesting a BitLocker recovery key. What the hell? I only set it up on ONE drive that contained my data and nothing else.
After a bit of reading I find out that it's some stupid option in the BIOS where it "protects" a drive if something changes. And even now I'm still not too sure where to get this recovery key. I read the Microsoft website and it's paragraphs and paragraphs of complicated information with a million and one different scenario based information. I found some clearer information on a random website something to do with key management in the BIOS but the options I had didn't match what they were saying... so since this locked partition just contained virtual machines (That I had backed up... albeit slightly older) again I just deleted and recreated it.. after going into the BIOS and disabling this dumb security feature.
And finally I completed the installation.
So really this is a warning to people with modern computers; if you're thinking about reinstalling Windows take in mind all of these problems. It shouldn't be this hard but like I said in the beginning; security comes at a price... except the Microsoft account thing. That's just a pure dumb idea.
Continue reading...
My laptop is pretty new and I had been having a few minor problems that I couldn't fix, to most people they're not issues but I knew they were there and I think all things like that should work, I suppose I'm stubborn and work-arounds are not an option.. so after many alleys of troubleshooting, asking for help and attempts to fix I decided to reinstall Windows start a fresh and see if it solves anything; since I've done this many times before it doesn't bother me much.
I downloaded the Media Creation Tool and set up my USB drive. Since all my data is on separate drives & partitions there wasn't anything else I needed to do; lets go.
I installed Windows pretty fast, chucked all my drivers on and installed updates & my password manager - thinking about how much good time I'm making in the process. I just had to Install the Pro pack, and then my software. I added my Microsoft account to download Pro and installed that.
And this is where I made my mistake.
I forgot to remove or disable my Microsoft account; I restarted to finish up installing Pro then got asked to log into my Microsoft account instead of a local one. Well I don't know my password... I only created that account purely for the benefit of Windows since they're annoyingly adamant it HAS to be a Microsoft one. I thought there had to be a way around this. Reluctant to mess about recovering the email I tried turning my Wifi off temporarily, restarted the laptop and it STILL wanted you to sign in! "You need access to the internet to do that".
How much of a stupid option is this? Unless I was missing something pretty obvious this is the single most stupid idea ever. Use your Microsoft account to log into Windows where you're limited to home. What if you take your laptop to a friends, coffee shop or anywhere you need to connect to a new Wifi? In this situation you simply can't an you're locked out! I just cannot believe it didn't offer local access without internet.
I figured that if I could get access to safe mode surely you had local access and I could change the login type there. So restarting & entering "Advanced Options"... or as I like to call them "Ridiculously-over-complicated-menu-system-just-to-access-safe-mode" I got stuck again. I got prompted to enter a BitLocker recovery key, and I have no clue why it was asking me this since my boot drive was NOT encrypted with BitLocker. I manage to "skip this drive" (so presumably it prompted me because my data drive was BitLocker enabled... which still doesn't make sense) only for it to ask me again! My boot drive wasn't set up with Bitlocker but I simply could not progress past this.
At this point I was so frustrated I just wiped it and reinstalled Windows yet again; this time making sure I remember to remove the dumb Microsoft account.
But as a final f-you it still wasn't finished with me. I noticed one of my partitions on my boot drive was locked with BitLocker... I tried to access it and it was requesting a BitLocker recovery key. What the hell? I only set it up on ONE drive that contained my data and nothing else.
After a bit of reading I find out that it's some stupid option in the BIOS where it "protects" a drive if something changes. And even now I'm still not too sure where to get this recovery key. I read the Microsoft website and it's paragraphs and paragraphs of complicated information with a million and one different scenario based information. I found some clearer information on a random website something to do with key management in the BIOS but the options I had didn't match what they were saying... so since this locked partition just contained virtual machines (That I had backed up... albeit slightly older) again I just deleted and recreated it.. after going into the BIOS and disabling this dumb security feature.
And finally I completed the installation.
So really this is a warning to people with modern computers; if you're thinking about reinstalling Windows take in mind all of these problems. It shouldn't be this hard but like I said in the beginning; security comes at a price... except the Microsoft account thing. That's just a pure dumb idea.
Continue reading...