How to sign out of a Microsoft account on Windows 10

Cre­at­ing a Microsoft account dur­ing the instal­la­tion of Win­dows 10 has become almost a nec­es­sary step dur­ing the instal­la­tion, result­ing in you hav­ing to enter the name and pass­word of the cre­at­ed account every time you log in. This is not always con­ve­nient, for exam­ple, in the case of using a com­put­er at home by one per­son, as a result of which our edi­to­r­i­al team decid­ed to cre­ate a com­plete guide on how to sign out of a Microsoft account on Win­dows 10 and make it pos­si­ble to sign in to a local account with­out a pass­word.

What is a Microsoft account?

Microsoft Cor­po­ra­tion in its lat­est ver­sions of oper­at­ing sys­tems con­tin­ues to main­tain a strict pol­i­cy of delim­it­ing user pro­files, so the licensed ver­sion of Win­dows can no longer be installed with­out offi­cial reg­is­tra­tion on the site “microsoft.com”. After cre­at­ing a new reg­is­tra­tion record, all user set­tings are stored on the com­pa­ny’s servers, so to log in from anoth­er device, it will be enough to enter a valid name and pass­word, but sub­ject to admin­is­tra­tor rights, which will be dis­cussed in more detail below. Also, this entry allows you to use oth­er sup­port­ed ser­vices, includ­ing “Skype”, “Out­look”, “Hot­mail” and many oth­ers.

On the one hand, such a scheme allows you to safe­ly use one pro­file by sev­er­al par­tic­i­pants, whose rights can also be lim­it­ed, but in the case of sta­tion­ary use of com­put­ers with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of access by strangers, such func­tions are use­less.

How do I sign out of my Microsoft account?

There are three main options for log­ging out of the sys­tem, the first of which is to alter­nate­ly press “Start” — “User icon in the low­er left cor­ner” — “Logout”. You can also use the key com­bi­na­tions “Ctrl+Alt+Del” or “Win+X” fol­lowed by press­ing the “Exit” item.

How to delete a Microsoft account?

Delet­ing a Microsoft pro­file may be required to restrict a user’s access to their device or to switch to pass­word­less login to Win­dows. Accord­ing to the advice of our experts, it is imme­di­ate­ly impor­tant to con­sid­er that along with the account, all set­tings and files from the linked desk­top are delet­ed with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a return.

If only one Microsoft account is used on the com­put­er, then the first step is to switch to a local user, for which you need to open “Start” — “Set­tings” — “Accounts” — “Email and Accounts”, where you should select “Sign in instead with a local account” and then enter a new name, pass­word, and hint.

Next, you can restart your PC and log in with new data, and then pro­ceed to delete your Microsoft pro­file by going to “Start” — “Set­tings” — “Fam­i­ly and oth­er users”, where you will need to mark the desired account and click “Delete”, and in the next step in the win­dow that appears with a warn­ing about delet­ing all user data, click “Delete account and data”.

This method is per­fect for pre-sale prepa­ra­tion of a com­put­er in order to pre­vent access to con­fi­den­tial per­son­al infor­ma­tion of a third par­ty, that is, the buy­er. In this case, it is advis­able to imme­di­ate­ly take care of delet­ing and trans­fer­ring oth­er files from hard dri­ves, for which you need to per­form the fol­low­ing steps:

1. go to “Start” — “Set­tings” — “Update and secu­ri­ty” — “Back­up ser­vice”;

2. select the “Add disk” item to trans­fer infor­ma­tion that can be saved, for exam­ple, on a “flash dri­ve”;

3. click “More options” and mark the items to be saved.

In addi­tion, it is advis­able to untie licens­es for var­i­ous pur­chased pro­grams, and there­fore, in some cas­es, you will need to con­tact the tech­ni­cal sup­port ser­vices of the ser­vices pro­vid­ed.

In addi­tion, the experts of our pub­li­ca­tion strong­ly rec­om­mend eras­ing all data with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of recov­ery by select­ing “Recov­ery” — “Start” — “Delete every­thing” in the “Options” menu.

It is also pos­si­ble to delete a Microsoft pro­file with­out liq­ui­dat­ing the account itself, for which you need to go to “Accounts” by means of the appro­pri­ate request in the “Start” search bar, and then click “Delete account”, dur­ing which you will be prompt­ed to save the files of the delet­ed desk­top .

How to implement passwordless login?

Many users expe­ri­ence a sig­nif­i­cant incon­ve­nience by con­stant­ly enter­ing a pass­word when start­ing the OS, so we decid­ed to talk about some ways to fix this prob­lem.

The sim­plest method is to use the “Win + R” keys with the com­mand “net­plwiz”, where you just need to select the desired pro­file and uncheck the “Require user­name and pass­word” box above, and then in the win­dow that appears, you will con­firm the old pass­word.

It is still pos­si­ble to cre­ate a local account in the same way as described above when delet­ing a Microsoft account, but with­out enter­ing a pass­word and prompt dur­ing reg­is­tra­tion.

Some­times own­ers of sys­tems run­ning Win­dows 10 expe­ri­ence dis­com­fort asso­ci­at­ed with ask­ing for a pass­word to wake up from hiber­na­tion, which is also extreme­ly incon­ve­nient, and you can fix this by going to “Accounts” — “Login Options” and select­ing “Nev­er” from the list on the right .

There is also a more com­plex method of edit­ing pro­files through the sys­tem reg­istry, imple­ment­ed by the fol­low­ing sequence of actions:

1. press “Win + R” and exe­cute “reged­it”;

2. go through the fold­ers “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESoftwereMicrosoftWindows NTCur­rentVer­sion­Win­l­o­gon”;

3. in the right col­umn, dou­ble-click the para­me­ter “AutoAd­min­L­o­gon” and change its set­ting from “0” to “1”;

4. at the final stage, you will need to change the “Default­Do­main­Name” item, where you should enter the com­put­er name, which can be viewed through “Com­put­er” — “RMB” — “Sys­tem Prop­er­ties”.

As a result of these manip­u­la­tions, the need to reg­u­lar­ly enter Win­dows pass­words is elim­i­nat­ed.

How do I change my Microsoft account email?

Quite often, users have to change their email address, for exam­ple, due to a large amount of incom­ing spam, as a result of which it becomes nec­es­sary to change the e‑mail in the Microsoft account, which can lead to the loss of user data, so our spe­cial­ists decid­ed to make a num­ber of rec­om­men­da­tions to be able to restore nor­mal oper­a­tion OS after chang­ing the email address with­out tak­ing dras­tic mea­sures, such as rein­stalling the entire sys­tem.

First you need to log in with your old data through the site https://account.microsoft.com and select the menu “Details” — “Man­age Microsoft account sign-in”, where the sys­tem may require con­fir­ma­tion of sign-in using two-fac­tor autho­riza­tion, if it is installed through Secu­ri­ty Set­tings. At the next stage, it remains to enter a new e‑mail address, select­ing it as the main one with the “Make Pri­ma­ry” but­ton, and after that the name of the mail can be used to log into Win­dows, after cre­at­ing the appro­pri­ate pro­file, which will be dis­cussed fur­ther.

How to create a new profile?

We want to clar­i­fy right away that the new ver­sion of Win­dows has two main types of accounts — local and Microsoft, which can be cre­at­ed and edit­ed in sev­er­al ways.

1. To open access through a Microsoft account, go to “Accounts” — “Fam­i­ly and oth­er users” — “Add a user for this com­put­er”, enter all the nec­es­sary data, includ­ing e‑mail, pass­word, hint and click “Next”, after which a new pro­file will be cre­at­ed, but with restric­tions on the rights of a reg­u­lar user. In order to be able to per­form any manip­u­la­tions with the OS under this account in the future, the new user will need to be assigned admin­is­tra­tor rights by click­ing the new pro­file icon in the “Fam­i­ly and oth­er users” sec­tion, and then “Change account type” and select “Admin­is­tra­tor”. More­over, the devel­op­ers have intro­duced a new parental con­trol fea­ture that is enabled when you select “Add a child account”, after which detailed sta­tis­tics of web­site vis­its and appli­ca­tion launch­es by your child or anoth­er per­son work­ing under this pro­file will be avail­able in the Microsoft account.

2. There are sev­er­al more ways to cre­ate local pro­files, for exam­ple, using the com­mand line, where you should exe­cute — net user “name” “pass­word” /add, and if you want to cre­ate an admin­is­tra­tor, then the view will be as fol­lows — net local­group admin­is­tra­tors “name” “pass­word” /add.

3. Anoth­er option is to use the “Local Users and Groups” sec­tion, which can be accessed by press­ing “Win + R”, exe­cut­ing “lusrmgr.msc”, after which it remains to right-click in the pro­file list box and click “New User”.

4. In the same way, you can use the “con­trol userpasswords2” com­mand and click add, as well as uncheck “Require user­name and pass­word”, if not need­ed.

Based on the obser­va­tions of our spe­cial­ists, on many com­put­ers, espe­cial­ly for office use, the built-in admin­is­tra­tor entry is often dis­abled, which sig­nif­i­cant­ly lim­its the capa­bil­i­ties of the own­ers of such PCs. How­ev­er, there is an easy way to return this option by run­ning the “secpol.msc” com­mand and select­ing the sec­tions “Local Poli­cies” — “Secu­ri­ty Options” — “Admin­is­tra­tor Account Sta­tus” — set to “Enabled”.

How to reset password?

This item is the last one, and also one of the most impor­tant in our opin­ion, since this infor­ma­tion will allow the user to access his com­put­er with­out rein­stalling the OS, even if all pass­words are lost.

If you for­got your Microsoft account pass­word, which made it impos­si­ble to access your Win­dows pro­file, you should go to the pass­word recov­ery page at
https://account.live.com/resetpassword.aspx, where one of the options for sub­se­quent actions will be offered, includ­ing sus­pi­cion that the account was used by intrud­ers. If you have access to the linked phone or mail, the process of resum­ing work will be lim­it­ed to con­firm­ing a mes­sage from the com­pa­ny in one of these ways, but in oth­er cas­es you may have to con­tact the tech­ni­cal sup­port of this ser­vice.

To unlock accounts, Win­dows devel­op­ers rec­om­mend cre­at­ing bootable flash dri­ves or disks imme­di­ate­ly after installing the sys­tem, how­ev­er, accord­ing to our sta­tis­tics, only a few do this, but at the same time, only a spe­cif­ic copy of Win­dows can be restored in this way, so we will con­sid­er a more uni­ver­sal option — this is the use of third-par­ty soft­ware devel­op­ers.

Now there are a large num­ber of such pro­grams, which are main­ly dis­trib­uted via tor­rent net­works, so users are at great risk of get­ting mal­ware after down­load­ing, how­ev­er, some of them do their job very well. How­ev­er, we believe that it is best to use proven soft­ware prod­ucts, such as the “Laz­er­soft Recov­er My Pass­word Home” util­i­ty, which can be down­loaded from the offi­cial web­site of free licensed soft­ware.
https://download.cnet.comwhere you can also safe­ly down­load antivirus­es and much more.

After down­load­ing the pro­gram, which will nat­u­ral­ly have to be done on a work­ing PC, you need to install the dis­tri­b­u­tion kit and launch the cre­at­ed short­cut on the desk­top. Next, the sequence for cre­at­ing a multi­boot flash dri­ve will be as fol­lows:

1. select the item “Burn Bootable CD / USB Disk” and the desired OS from the list (note: the Win­dows 8.1 64-bit ver­sion works with all sys­tems, but only with the same bit depth);

2. then we insert the “flash dri­ve” into the com­put­er and click “Next”, where you will need to select the required dri­ve let­ter, that is, “flash dri­ves”;

3. at the next stage, the “flash dri­ve” will be for­mat­ted with the sub­se­quent record­ing of the boot mod­ule, after which you can begin work on unlock­ing access.

First of all, you need to go into the “bios” to install the boot from our flash card, for which you should repeat­ed­ly press one of the keys (depend­ing on the equip­ment) Del, F2 or less often Esc, F1, imme­di­ate­ly after turn­ing on the pow­er but­ton of the device.

Now the “Bios” moth­er­board fine-tun­ing win­dow should appear, which varies depend­ing on the device, where you should look for the “Boot” menu with a choice of boot pri­or­i­ty (it can be writ­ten, for exam­ple, “Boot Device Pri­or­i­ty”), in which you need to install our ” flash dri­ve” and press “F10” to save the set­tings.

Fol­low­ing this, if every­thing is done cor­rect­ly, the inter­face of the “Laz­er­soft Recov­er” pro­gram will load, in which you need to click “Reset Win­dows Pass­word”, after which it remains to select an account to unlock from the list, click “Next” and “RESET / UNLOCK”.

Then you can sim­ply pull out the flash card to return the boot from the HDD and reboot the OS, which will now be pos­si­ble to enter with­out a pass­word on behalf of the admin­is­tra­tor.

Thank you, we hope this mate­r­i­al was use­ful to you.