What password do I need to enter to perform a reset of my computer or system restore from the Windows Recovery Environment in Windows 10?

Hello, this is Emily.

If the old computer is one that has sat idle for some time, it is possible that it would only accept an old cached password for your Microsoft account from "then". As it is not booting up so it won't "sync" to the new password via internet. That's just a possibility, assuming you have changed password at one time.

It is not related to the issue you described with the sign out one. That can be an one-off incident..

I think your best way to get that computer up and running again, in the most efficient way is to do a clean install. It will actually "reset" better than a factory reset, because it is using a clean image you will download from Microsoft.

To perform a clean installation of Windows 10 using the Windows Media Creation Tool. You do need to get access to another computer so you can download the Windows installation files into a flash drive, then use the flash drive to help your computer. Hopefully you have a spare computer, or you can have friend or family help you.

The following steps should be done on a working Windows computer:

Download the Windows Media Creation Tool from Microsoft's official website. https://www.microsoft.com/software-download/win...

Run the tool and select "Create installation media for another PC."

Choose your language, edition, and architecture (32 or 64-bit) and select "Next."

Choose "USB flash drive" as the media to use for the installation and select "Next."

Connect a USB flash drive with at least 8 GB of free space to your computer.

Select the USB flash drive you want to use, and then select "Next."

The tool will then download the required files and create the installation media.

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Now these steps will  be done on your problematic computer:

Go to the computer's BIOS boot menu to have it boot from the USB drive.

Follow the on-screen instructions to install Windows 10, making sure to choose "Custom install" and select the option to delete all existing partitions.

Once the installation is complete, you'll have a clean installation of Windows 10 on your computer.

Another possibility is that you might have the built in admin user named "administrator" enabled at some point, and it wants that password.

As for the flash drive, it is not showing up in the boot menu. Windows boot manager is not the one you want actually. Just to make sure - you did NOT just download the Windows Media Creation Tool directly to the USB drive right? You have to download that tool to a computer, not the USB drive, and run that tool on the computer, then go through the steps to have the tool download the installation files to the USB.

In addition, it is a flash drive, not an external drive, right?

Hi Emily,

I don't believe I have ever changed the p/w for my Microsoft account, certainly not in the time since the laptop in question was in regular use.

As to doing a clean install, I have already downloaded to a USB stick the Media Creation Tool. However, I can't figure out how to install it. On my Dell laptop I believe the correct procedure is to press F12 when the Dell logo appears during boot up. That takes me to a screen with the following options:

UEFI BOOT:

Windows Boot Manager

OTHER OPTIONS:

BIOS Setup

Device Configuration

BIOS Flash Update

Diagnostics

Change Boot Mode Settings

When I select the first option, which I believe is the required option, the computer just goes ahead and repeats boot the sequence that ultimately ends up at the WinRE. After the Dell logo appears, there is text at the bottom of the screen that says "Preparing Automatic Repair", followed 5 or 10 seconds later by another message that says "Diagnosing Your PC", which then takes me to a blue screen entitled "Automatic Repair". When I then select "Advanced options", the next screen is entitled "Choose an option", so I select "Troubleshoot", where my options are Reset this PC (but ultimately it won't let me reset without entering a p/w for 'this account', and my known Microsoft account p/w is rejected) or Advanced options, which when selected takes me to what I believe is the Win RE screen. And from the Win RE screen, to actually take any action I once again have to enter a p/w for 'this account'.

For three of the options accessible from screen following pressing F12, specifically "Device Configuration", "BIOS Flash Update" and "Change Boot Mode Settings", I have to enter the Administrator p/w, which surprised me for two reasons: (1) as owner and sole user of the computer, I believe I am the administrator and (2) I have never knowingly set an administrator p/w. In fact, I do not use a p/s to log on, either.

And on the subject of passwords, as Win 10 came installed from the factory, I don't know the activation code or whatever I would need to activate a clean install of Win 10, should I be lucky enough to actually get to that point.

Cheers,

David

This is odd. Immediately after posting the above post, I went to log out of my Microsoft account, and received the message, below. I think this says that there is some problem logging me out of my Microsoft account. Might this be related to the problem I described in my initial post? Incidentally, I did not have to log back in, even after closing my browser.