Locked out of Surface Pro. Forgot Pin and won’t let me use any other method to log in. How can I reset pin?

Question

Forgot Pin and entered too many incorrect pins. Now won’t let me use face recognition to log in or any other way. Tried holding shift and restart with no changes.

Answer 1

Hello Duke,

Welcome to Microsoft Community.

While holding down the Shift key, clicking the power button to start is a safe mode operation, but even if you enter safe mode, you will be required to verify your account.

Normally, if you have entered the wrong Pin multiple times, you should see a prompt:

You have entered the wrong PIN several times.

To try again, enter A1B2C3 below .

Have you seen the above information? And followed the prompts to enter the correct "challenge phrase"?

After you have entered A1B2C3 correctly, you will be asked to enter your Pin again, but at this point, you should be able to see the options "I forgot my Pin" and "Login options". If you are not allowed to log in with face recognition at this time, have you ever tried "I forgot my Pin"? Clicking on this option will ask you to re-enter the correct Microsoft account password in order to log in to the system.

However, if you don't see this option, there is no way to reset the Pin now, and to get into the system, you can only use the Surface recovery drive to restore your Surface to factory Settings:

Restore or reset Surface for Windows - Microsoft Support ****

You will need to create a Surface-specific recovery drive on another Windows device and use it to restore your Surface, the full process is in the video linked above, be sure to watch the video carefully.

Best Regards,

Mitchell | Microsoft Community Support Specialist

Answer 2

Thanks for the response. I do see challenge phrase that I don’t remember. I don’t have the option for I forgot my pin. All it has is Challenge phrase and Pin. Once I incorrectly enter it asks for me to restart. I keep clicking face recognition, but it won’t let me use that option. The login options has the two face or keyboard option, but clicking both only allows me to enter pin that’s it.

Answer 3

Hi Duke,

Thanks for your additional instructions, in this state, please follow the next steps I mentioned in my reply to restore your Surface to factory Settings using the Surface Recovery drive.

Once this is done, you will be re-entered into the OOBE process, where you can re-configure your Surface account and add a Pin or face recognition.

Best Regards,

Mitchell | Microsoft Community Support Specialist