Diagnostic Mode "Something happened and your PIN isn't available" Boot Loop - Cannot Login (SOLUTION)

So in a recovery environment often times the drive letters are changed. It could be that your normal c:/ drive is now d:/

I found the utilman.exe file on the drive where Windows is actually installed — but when you're in the recovery environment since the drive letters are all shuffled. What worked for me was opening Command Prompt from the recovery USB and running this command to find the correct drive:

for %i in (C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z) do @if exist "%i:\Windows\System32\utilman.exe" echo Found on %i:\

Once I saw the correct drive (in my case it ended up being D:), I was able to navigate to D:\Windows\System32

Then you can use the dir command to list the contents of the directory and verify it's actually there. It may be possible you or someone else renamed if previously so listing the directory contents may be helpful

Hope that helps!

Problems:

• At the Windows login screen the message "Something happened and your PIN isn't available. Click to setup your PIN again." appeared. Clicking this did nothing, it would just return me to the same login screen. There was no alternative option to Sign in with Password like there normally is. Effectively, login is impossible and the PC appeared bricked.

Process to get error:

• I went to msconfig (Win+R>msconfig) and selected Diagnostic Startup with all default settings. I immediately restarted my PC to find that I could not log in.
• (Unrelated?) I tried diagnostic startup b/c one of my mice started randomly highlighting stuff - as if Click Lock or sticky keys were on (all were off).

Research: I found reports of this back to 2018. I also ran into System Restore errors which I found instances of back to 2017. The dozens of other forums usually dead-ended or resulted in a "Refresh your PC" or "Do a clean install of Windows." Unacceptable! I was about to give up until I pieced this solution together.

Solution: Force boot mode back to Normal via command prompt and restart.

Skill level: Intermediate

Time estimate: 10 minutes

Solution notes:

• I did this with a bootable USB drive plugged in - I don't think that was necessary but try plugging one in if this fails without it.
• If you can successfully boot into safe mode with command prompt (option 5 from Startup Settings blue screen), then try Steps 14-17 below and see if it works. If it does, you're good to go. If not, go through all steps.
• Tested on Windows 10 and 11.

Steps:

1. Get into Recovery Mode (blue screen): At the login screen, click the bottom-right corner Power Button. Then, before doing anything, hold down the Shift key. While holding Shift key down, click on Restart. This should reboot the computer and take you to the “Choose an Option” Recovery screen.
   • If this doesn't work, see alternate later in post.
2. If prompted, press F1 to enter Recovery Environment. If not, proceed to next step.
3. Select Troubleshoot and/or Advanced Options until you get to a screen with a System Image Recovery option.
4. Click System Image Recovery.
5. Click Cancel on the "Re-image Your Computer" window.
6. Ensure "Select a system image" is selected and click Next
7. Click Advanced, then select Install a Driver and click OK. This gets you access to a Windows Explorer-type folder structure.
8. Click This PC on the left side and find which drive has utilman.exe in the [drive letter]\Windows\System32 folder. The drive letter may not match your normal letters - this doesn't matter. Only one drive will have utilman.exe so you know you are in the correct one once you find it (my letters happened to match, except I had an X drive that wasn't useful).
9. Rename Utilman to Utilman1. In this folder mode, you'll need to right-click and select Refresh to see the changes.
10. Rename cmd to Utilman (refresh view to confirm both files are named properly).
11. Close/cancel all of the open windows (close the Open window, click Cancel on the Add a Driver window, then close the last window)
12. Click Continue from blue screen to reboot to your login screen.
13. Click the Accessibility button on the login screen. A command prompt should open. (icon is a dashed clock at 3 o'clock for Win 10 or a person for Win 11)
14. Type: "start msconfig" without quotes and press enter.
15. The msconfig window should now appear. Select Normal Boot from the first tab and click Ok.
16. Confirm restarting your system.
17. At the next login screen, you should be able to enter your PIN and everything should be back to normal!!
18. Now, you need to go back and rename Utilman to cmd and Utilman1 to Utilman (I had to follow steps 1-12 since Windows wouldn't let me edit the files while logged in). After re-completing step 12, you should be done.

Other useful info:

• The default command prompt directory should be C:\Windows\System32. If that's not what's displayed, type "cd /d c:" without the quotes and press enter. Then type "cd c:\windows\system32" without quotes and press enter.
• Step 1 Alternate: Shut down your PC. Once powered off, boot it back up, then as soon as you see the Windows loading dots or windows logo, hold down your power button 5-10 seconds to turn off your PC. Repeat this at least once until the Recovery menu appears (big blue screen).

Unsuccessful attempts before discovering solution:

• Restarting 5,000 times.
• Startup repair numerous times, with and without bootable USB (no repairs were found)
• Tried options 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6 from the Startup Settings blue screen (available by holding shift while selecting the power button and the restart button from the login screen)
• System Restore (failed because it failed to extract WindowsApps, error code 0x80070026) - this seems like a permissions error?
  • I tried using using Safe Mode with Command Prompt and using takeown to get permission. Most operations listed as Success, but I received an error as the last output line from step 3 of thisArchived Forum I used. I tried Step 4 anyways but it didn't work.
• Booting from Windows usb (nothing worked except I could install a fresh version of Windows - no thanks)
• Booting into safe mode (same PIN error in all three modes - safe mode, SM with command prompt, and SM with networking). None of the modes looked different from the Diagnostic Mode except the command prompt option obviously displayed a command prompt.

As an alternative to parts of the above IF you don't have BitLocker enabled or have the key handy, get a Windows 11 PE USB boot drive to boot the computer. Then, use that to access the normal boot drive.

1. Using the Win PE boot the system.
2. Complete steps 8, 9, 10 above -- you may need the BitLocker key to unlock the drive (yes, you get to skip steps 1-7 and more) .
3. Restart in regular Windows Mode.
4. Using regular boot, complete step 13, 14, 15 above.
5. Restart again with the Win PE USB.
6. Complete Step 18 above.

Much easier than jumping through all the hoops with system recovery, etc.

To refresh, you can try pressing F5

im stuck on 8 whenever i try to rename utilman to utilman1. it doesnt give me the option to refresh to see changes. I tried to rename down at the file name bar. Can someone please help?

Steve - Thanks for your reply.. I'd already tried the restore. Unfortunately, the last restore is the one I messed up on by taking someones online suggestion of changing to diagnostic; on startup and getting into the loop. Won't accept pin or password. I need to get into msconfig...

As far as Ultiman goes, I think that many look in they're C drive and don't go down further into Windows C drive, where Ultiman is hiding.

I made two posts on Jan. 2. The 1st one is long, and I explained everything I've done in trying to make a Ventoy boot drive. There are two questions on the end:

One is asking if I need the 2nd part of the ISO files, in the blue box, in order to make the boot drive work (I had --wim errors on it and didn't download). Two, I'm a bit confused on which file to download to the drive; I don't want to do the wrong file.

These should be fairly easy questions for a knowledgeable person, but I haven't gotten any responses. I've been trying to do this for months now, Read my 1st Jan 2 post if you can....