Shared PC reports Microsoft Account PW Expired in WORKGROUP

Joe Schuch 1 Reputation point
2020-09-23T14:47:08.323+00:00

Has anyone else seen this / come up with a better solution?

The details: The problem of accessing a shared drive when the MicrosoftAccount is an active user on BOTH machines appears to be related to a LOCAL account on the SHARING PC that is subsequently associated with a MicrosoftAccount. It appears as if, under certain circumstances (i.e. prior to HOMEGROUP deprecation), Windows is unable to forget that the account was once a LOCAL account, thus when the MicrosoftAccount tries to connect and authenticate from another PC to its SHARED folder the SHARING PC reports "password expired" even though the PW for the MicrosoftAccount is NOT expired. I would characterize this as a "corrupt user profile."

Scope: I believe the impact may be limited to SHARE access by the MicrosoftAccount with the corrupt profile. In other words, users connecting to the SHARE with their MicrosoftAccounts should be able to do so, though I did not test this. If they are unable to access the SHARE, it may be necessary to re-create the SHARE through the local ADMIN, if it had been established originally through what is now the corrupt profile.

The best fix: Login as ADMIN and remove the USER (thereby removing the malfunctioning user's profile), and add back in. My computer ran all night removing my corrupt profile, but when I added it back this a.m. the SHARE worked fine. The downside is making sure that all user files in c:\users\username\ are backed up.

The quick work-around: Connect to the SHARED folder as local admin (i.e. "SHARINGPC\admin").

An untested fix: On SHARING PC un-link user account from MicrosoftAccount, and then re-link.

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  1. Joe Schuch 1 Reputation point
    2020-09-29T00:34:42+00:00

    Hello Daisy,

    This occurred subsequent to a clean, original install (from the Windows 7-to-10 upgrade) of Win 10-64 Pro on a Thinkpad T530, also found on a client's Dell Precision desktop.

    1. Create local user (not Live acct) during install.
    2. Link to Live acct.
    3. Create Shared folder.
    4. Verify Share from another PC on LAN with same Live acct.
    5. Update to v1909 or better on Sharing PC.
    6. After update, when trying to access shared folder, Live acct user will be prompted to login, which will fail with "password expired" message.

    It took some time (2 days, actually) to narrow down the problem because when it first presented itself (quite some time ago) I found that a) granting rights to EVERYONE did not resolve it for this user, and so I b) fixed it quickly by logging in as the local admin for the sharing PC.

    I fixed it on my bench system by deleting/adding the problematic profile, however I wish I had tried unlinking/relinking the LIVE account to the user ID before I blew away the profile!

    best/joe.