Something happened and your PIN isn't available. Click to set up your PIN again.

Anonymous
2020-07-12T23:16:34+00:00

* * Locked * *

I have a new PC with W10. I decided to use the PIN code, but now I get the message "Something happened and your PIN isn't available. Click to set up your PIN again."

When I click 'Set up my PIN' nothing, the same message reappears.

I looked up the issue on the internet and found that I should login using another sign-in option. However, there is no way to get to another option. The text above is all I see on the screen.

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Windows Hello, lock screen and sign-in

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Anonymous
2020-07-12T23:37:28+00:00

Hello there! I'm sorry that didn't work. You can try this steps instead:

Turn off your PC

Start your PC, just as Windows attempts to load (spinning dots), press and hold Power Button on the casing of your PC for 5 - 10 seconds to perform a Hard Shut Down

Do this twice

On the third start Windows will boot into the Recovery Environment and from there you can access System Repair, Safe Mode, Command Prompt . . . etc.

Please try each option one at a time, then see of Windows will boot . . .

Go to Troubleshoot - Advanced Option - Startup Repair

See if Windows startup can repair itself

Go to Troubleshoot - Advanced Option - System Restore

Check to see if you have a restore point you can go back to

If you do not have a Restore Point, go to Troubleshoot - Advanced Option - Startup Settings and click Restart

Upon restart, press 4 to enter Safe Mode

Once in Safe Mode, backup your data if you do not already have a backup

Open Device Manager and check to make sure all your Drivers are up to date

Reboot to see if Windows will start Normally

If the above fails, go to Troubleshoot - Advanced Options - Reset this PC

Choose to keep your files and apps, just your files or to keep nothing

Then start the Reset

Hope this will do the trick

Regards,

Louie

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  1. Anonymous
    2021-04-23T00:45:07+00:00

    You've got my attention.  I do have other ways in but I'd like to understand what sethc is.  But note that I'd not gone anywhere near msconfig.  I try not to do anything like you described!  :-)  What I did was to follow instructions from tech support from MSI to install an upgraded bios and firmware.  Rebooted, and discovered that I couldn't use my pin or change it.   So I'm recreating my preferred Win login - but it will take me many hours and a lot of pain.  Mind you very little if any files lost beyond my background but I still have to do things like set up Excel and Word the way I want them.  And that is a true PITA!

    What I don't get is what actually happened, what went wrong.

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  2. Anonymous
    2021-04-23T01:16:48+00:00

    Sethc.exe is part of the Windows Operating System. It's description says "Accessibility shortcut keys". This is what allows a user to launch a command window by pressing the SHIFT key 5 times while on the login screen where you would normally input your PIN but can't because it's now broken. This method is important because in order to run MSCONFIG you need the user interface to be able to open up and normally you can only do that after you've actually logged into Windows. Although you can boot to a command prompt by using Windows Recovery it's not the same because you can't launch MSCONFIG or any other program that requires a UI.

    I suspect in my case that when I booted into Diagnostic Startup mode, even though it said something along the lines of it would disable all non-essential services, it still ended up disabling a critical service required for the PIN feature to work. Although the circumstances which caused the PIN input to break for everyone on this thread, I suspect it fundamentally comes down to a critical component/service somewhere simply getting disabled. I believe that by getting into MSCONFIG as I did and changing the Startup options that it's possible to re-enable whatever component/service was disabled so that the PIN will work again. All I did after getting back into MSCONFIG and changing it back to Normal Startup was reboot and then amazingly the PIN input box appeared again and I was able to proceed as normal. 

    If my hypothesis above is correct and a critical component/service is getting disabled that's breaking the PIN then Microsoft really needs to give this a much closer look to ensure this can't happen. And they need to make sure the user gets presented with an option to actually input their account password as an alternative. It's crazy that someone could inadvertently get locked out of their PC over this issue and have to completely reinstall Windows; that's totally unacceptable.

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  3. Anonymous
    2021-04-23T03:02:37+00:00

    There is a very serious problem here in Windows.  That a bios and / or EC firmware upgrade could disable a PIN is equally dangerous.  MAYBE I could have followed your steps.  I don't know.  But I'm guessing that there is a different serious bug in Win 10 related to the firmware fix.  Either way, scary.

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