Why did Personal Vault authentication change?

Anonymous
2022-10-10T17:31:28+00:00

It used to be that when I accessed my Personal Vault, it would ask me to authenticate with Microsoft Authenticator. That suddenly disappeared, and now it gives me the options of authenticating with a fingerprint or my PIN. I don't want my PIN to work to get to my Personal Vault. Other people use my PIN to access my machine. I don't want to use the same authentication to get to my personal vault. I want that to go to Microsoft Authenticator so that it is different.

Why did it change, and how can I change it back?

Microsoft 365 and Office | OneDrive | For home | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2023-03-02T13:32:53+00:00

    Thank you for this, it worked and it didn't.

    On my W10 laptop this seems to have reverted to proper 2FA via the MS Authenticator App. I repeated the process on my W11 laptop, and the first time I tried to open the vault it used that slightly different method of 2FA where it uses the app, but displays a code for you to be certain it's the same request. The W10 machine did the same. I authorised it and all was good. However, after a single reboot the W11 laptop reverted to Fingerprint/PIN for the 2FA.

    This rather repeated what I seen previously, when I removed both OneDrive for Business and OneDrive Personal. Reinstalled OneDrive personal and all works well. Repeated reboots and 2FA continued to work properly. But as soon as OneDrive for Business is added to this W11 laptop the OneDrive personal reverts to fingerprint/PIN.

    Once OD business is installed any attempt tot get to the setting of OD personal causes the system try icon to disappear, I assume it's crashed in the background. If via file explorer or any other app like Word or Excel I attempt to access the files on the OD personal all is fine, it's just the System Tray access that has disappeared. Once restarted you can often get access at the second attempt.

    All in all this has become very flaky and with less sense of security and expectation all is well.

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  2. Anonymous
    2023-02-28T14:14:21+00:00

    Many thanks for the answer!

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  3. Anonymous
    2023-02-28T13:05:20+00:00

    What other consequences are there of unlinking your MS Account from Windows? I'm not clever enough to understand fully what that means. Does the rest of OneDrive work still?

    Hi, you can follow this article to unbind MS account from Windows.

    Switch your Windows 10 device to a local account - Microsoft Support

    And yes, everything still works the same. OneDrive, MS Edge, MS Outlook and all other MS apps keep you still signed in. As far as I know there is only one lost benefit. When the account is connected on Windows level, then it doesn't require your password. Windows should directly sign you into selected MS services. Plus, there are some synced Windows settings like wallpaper and so on.

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  4. Anonymous
    2023-02-27T19:30:20+00:00

    What other consequences are there of unlinking your MS Account from Windows? I'm not clever enough to understand fully what that means. Does the rest of OneDrive work still?

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  5. Craig Long 18,635 Reputation points
    2023-02-26T19:29:29+00:00

    Why use 2FA when you can choose one of these? I would choose the physical security key for everything and am thinking about getting one. However, I may need to fall back on one of the other methods also.

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