this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2026
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I ran into the same type of problem trying to reset the forgotten MS password for a friend. In her case she could log in to her PC with a PIN but not her password. Outlook was still accessible from the PC but not her phone.
Attempting to change the password resulted in an "SMS service not available" message 90% of the time over a period of days. The few times the service was available and it said we successfully changed the password, the new password would not work, even when we were positive it was entered correctly. The SSD wasn't anywhere near full.
Microsoft then turned the days already wasted because of their incompetence into a week. As a last ditch effort we tried Microsoft's 24 hour turn-around password reset questionnaire three times. After going through the process the new password was still rejected both on her PC and phone every single time.
We eventually had to give up. If her PC or her Outlook app ever asks for a password she'll lose all access and that's apparently just fine with Microsoft. When she does buy a new PC it'll be an Apple.
an apple? Because of this? why? why is it not an option to use a computer without an online account?
OS-X (they still use that, right? Not iOS desktop or somesuch nonsense, yet?) seemed pretty much a middle ground between Windows and Linux the last time I used it. Kinda slightly more polished and uniform presentation than Ubuntu-du-jour, a little less mysterious than Windows, but in the end: just as screwed up.
I tried enabling Home folder encryption. After about 3 days a hard power-off shutdown (needed due to a driver error in their walled-garden hardware MacBook Pro, it wouldn't power off or restart any other way) then the encrypted home folder was toast, unretrievable - laptop wouldn't boot. Tech support was very nice, reassuring that they knew what was going on, and their best solution? Reinstall the OS from physical media, start over fresh, your files are so secure that not you or anybody else on the planet will ever see them again.
that's ridiculous. not even linux is that secure, unless you only store the luks keys on ramdisk haha
Well, the home folder was encrypted, and the hard shutdown had borked the headers in such a way that the decryption was failing. I suppose a few hundred hours of technical analysis might have retrieved the files, but luckily it was a new PC and I only had about 100 hours of work on it to start with.
Microsoft is making it impossible to use Windows PCs without an online account. Obviously there's Linux, but I'm not willing to be her only source of tech support. That leaves Apple.
in the consumer versions, yes. but more generally that will still remain an option for some time at least.
for now, there's windows 10 LTSC, updates until 2032. I would get her this. after that she could still use windows 11 LTSC releases, which don't receive surprise function changes because businesses use it for critical things.
https://massgrave.dev/windows_ltsc_links
same site also has an open source forever activation tool
I've used Massgrave, but that and the other things you mentioned are not options in this case.
A few years ago I helped a different friend when her printer quit working on Windows 10. What started as occasional help turned into near daily phone calls and demands for tech support to get the printer working again. Turned out her boyfriend was getting pissed off when he was playing a game and killing Windows with the power button on the PC.
Lesson learned.
I'm not willing to become anyone's tech support rep. I'll help this friend occasionally but won't go further than that.
ok, but won't they also demand tech support for the mac? and if others can't give them help for windows, and you won't either, who will for the mac?
Gotta laugh at the downvotes. Maybe you’d like to be her tech support?
I did not downvote you
Sorry I wasn't clear - I should have worded it differently. I meant to infer that I was referring to whomever did.
Apple.