Remote Desktop "Your Credentials Did Not Work"

If the user is logged in locally on the target (remote) Windows 11 machine via PIN = RDP remote login with the same identity (MSA) does NOT work.

If the user is logged in locally on the target (remote) Windows 11 machine via PASSWORD = RDP remote login with the same identity (MSA) DOES work.

My Win11 target PC only gives me the option of Pin Login so I had to follow the "reset Pin" workflow, login with the MSA via username/password, and once logged in cancel the rest of the Pin reset, and then it proceeded to log me into the target machine OK, and then I was able to RDP from the second PC to the target PC using the MSA identity.

if I then close the RDP session to the target machine, then go back to the target machine, sign-in via PIN this time, then try RDP using SAVED credentials in the RDP session - I get the "login attempt failed" / "Your credentials do not work" message. If I then RE-ENTER the password manually and re-try... it DOES work.

So something is borked around the cached credentials / Pin / Saved RDP credentials / whatever combo that means sometimes it just work authenticate.

Is Microsoft this terrible that even they are unable to help?

It seems like Windows (11) does require a local password to log on via RDP. A few people have discussed this option already, but I would like to contribute another solution in case you can neither sign in with a local password nor create one (as was my case). The option to add a password, as shown above in solution 5 simply did not exist for me; my account is an online account.

This solution did not require any of the above steps, nor did it require me to turn Windows Hello (or the under Sol. 5 mentioned option) off.

If you are on Win 11 with Hello and 2FA, nothing else worked so far, and you can’t set or use a local Password, you might want to try this:
Sign out > inhibit Hello from signing you in, and click ‘sign-in options’ > click on ‘I forgot my pin’ > log in with your Microsoft account (and therefore your account Password) > approve the sign in request, in case you have 2FA > confirm that ‘you are sure’ to reset your PIN (you can set the same PIN again) > reset the PIN.

Thats it, all Windows needed was for you to sign in once with your account password. At least, this is the solution that worked for me.

None of these options resolve the problem. In my case, remote PC is Win 11 Pro, HTPC is a new Win 11 Pro (new PC, new installation of Windows.)

In point of fact, your last suggestion to delete the "WinStations" key rendered the PC inoperable and required reinstalling the OS. I'd advise others not to try this.

So there's clearly some new feature or configuration of Win 11 that disables the RDP connection, since the other machines on this LAN all interoperate nicely on demand. Network setting is Private, BTW.

Anyone else have any insights? It would be great to fix this.

In my case the issue seems to be related to an account setting that only allows sign-in using Windows Hello.

The setting is in Control Panel -> Accounts -> Sign-in options.

Under additional settings you should see a setting saying "For improved security, only allow Windows Hello sign-in for Microsoft accounts on this device".

I did the change on the remote computer that I was trying to connect into.

After disabling this setting I was successfully able to connect to my remote computer using RDP.