User Account issues at Boot for Swift 3

arde

First, let me admit up front that I am computer-challenged so forgive me if this is a simple issue, but it has me stumped.  Last week I set up my new Swift 3 SF314-51 laptop with two users - me as admin and my girlfriend. When I powered on everything was OK and our two user accounts were listed to choose from.  Suddenly, after a few days, upon power on I began to get a screen that showed my name, followed by the message "We are unable to connect right now. Please check your network and try again later", followed by an "OK" button.  When I hit the  OK button, it went to another screen that showed my name, followed by a user field populated with an abbreviation of my name, and a password field. If I just hit enter, it then takes me to the normal screen where our two user accounts are listed.  Everything is ok after that. 

 

I don't know why this started but I would certainly like to go back to the way it was originally.  Can anyone help? 

padgett

What it means is that Microsoft now defaults to cloud based credentials on setup or when you add a user and makes it difficult to use local credentials. Once you are cloud based then you must have a network connection to be able to log in. If your network connection is slow connecting, the login may timeout and give you the error. That you were later able to login means the connection was made. You also get that error if not connected at all but that does not heal miraculously. This is for all cloud accounts. (you are supposed to be able to enter a password and gain access when offline but this does not always work).

 

Personally I set my machines up for local so that connection to a network is unnecessary but to do this during the account creation process you need to skip the large bold print and toward the bottom you will see something that says "I don't have this person's sign in information" and then "add user without Microsoft account". This should give you the old style create user page with name, password (twice) and hint. Once that is done you can make that account an admin. Or not.

 

Since you are able to get in at least for now, first thing I'd suggest is creation of an off-line admin account that is not used for anything so you always have access. Then I'd remove the admin rights from your cloud account and always work from there. If the UAC complains about something you know is safe and really, really want to do, then use the admin password for that only. I rarely need it.

 

Warning: periodically I get blurbs like Things are better with a M$ account...Sign in with your M$ account instead. No thank you.

 

BTW when trying to clean up an infected machine particiularly some of the new rootkits, the last thing you want to do is connect to a network so even if I have the MS password it doesn't work. It is often easier to pull the hardrive and work as a slave drive on another machine but the last one had a surface mount SSD. That took me a while.

arde

Thnaks for your reply to my question.  It sounds to me that you identified the cause of the problem and I'm sure your recommended solution would likely solve it.  However, not being very knowledgeable in these matters, I am very uncomfortable in attempting your solution.  I'm concerned that I will do something wrong and cause a more severe problem.  The sign on screen is simply an annoyance and not worth the risk of messing something else up. Thanks for your help anyway.

padgett

The ask around for someone knowlegable, I strongly suggest that you have a second and local means to gain access if there is a problem logging in that requires a network connection. Otherwise you might be better of with something other than Windows.