How to Unlock a Device Locked Using Find my Device in the Microsoft Account

How to unlock the window

This is the only way that worked. Thank you!

I'm glad I could help. I also had the same experience and was quite disappointed with the answers on here as well.

Hi ryan, thank you for your advice. It actually work for me after scrolling through the internet.

But, i have some kind of problem after logging in.

1. I can't open my windows security tab, it just blank.
2. All my apps is gone (maybe because i restore the system because at first i can't open the directory C, and then i use other advice to do system restore and regedit advice for making administrator account in lock screen eventhough it's not working)

Can i get any advice for it? It feels like i'm not using my laptop because all the setting is reset.

Once again, thankyou Ryan

Hello, I have found a working solution for me.

1. Hold Shift whilst restarting the computer from the locked out login screen.
2. Your PC will boot into the Windows Recovery Environment
3. Go to Troubleshoot - Advanced Options
4. System Recovery- I chose a backup from 3 days ago.

The system recovery worked and I am now able to use my PC again.

I just want to point out Microsoft that this is such a flaw in your systems. I went to the shop and thought I would save my self time not having to go back in the builidng locking my pc and came back to having to do a full restore because you can't unlock it again. How stupid is that.

Okay so firstly Ryan Archer was a life saver. His method worked perfectly, saved my data and the hassle of a restore. Although I have a few refinements that I would like to add.

For step 1, holding shift while restarting didn’t send my Windows into recovery mode. What I did was to hold the power button to force shut down. Then started my computer again and soon as Windows began loading (Windows or Manufacturer’s logo appears), I force shut down again. I did this a second time and let it boot normally the third time. After this the recovery settings appeared.

Also, some people were asking about the “recovery key” mentioned in this step. It just means the pin or password that you use to normally sign in.

In step 5, after entering “1234” as key name, an error is encountered saying “file is used by another process”. A few people have also reported this issue above and there is also screenshot of it. The fix is simple, just go back all the folders to the root folder i.e “My Computer” where all the drives are listed. From there just follow the path Ryan provided’ which is PC > (C:) Drive > Windows > System32.

The problem was that the System32 folder initially available was from the Boot drive X, instead of C drive.

In step 7, the registry entry name for me and a few other people on this thread was "DevicePasswordlessBuildVersion" instead of "DevicePasswordBuildVersion". Although they work the same. Just change the value from 2 to 0.

Bonus Step at the end: You can use regedit and follow all these steps again to revert the value from 0 to 2 after the system is restored. The reason being that the additional sign in option for using the account password to log in remains on the log in screen after everything is done. But for me it wasn’t a problem and I did not revert the settings.

Lastly, I can’t say I’m surprised at Microsoft for doing something like this, but still I’m a little bit shocked at how this bug was able to fly under their QA team’s radar given the seriousness of the potential outcome of this problem and just how easily identifiable it was. I was just exploring the options within my Microsoft Account when I stumbled onto this “feature” and decided to try it out. Thankfully I’m tech savvy enough and Ryan’s guidance worked, otherwise I can’t imagine what those other people who spent days or weeks on this problem, going back and forth with IT support and still at the end losing all their data went through.

Here’s to hoping the devs realise this and patch it soon, not even that hard of a fix really.