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Hello,

Last week-end, someone came to me with a peculiar issue: their Windows account was linked to a Microsoft account that somehow no longer exists, preventing them from logging in. From then, the solution appeared simple: transform the account into a local one.

Unfortunately, all the resources I found online presumes that you are logged into the account you want to unlink, which wasn't possible. And unfortunately, you can't unlink said account from an Administrator account either.

Since the computer was brand new and barely touched, I ended up enabling the Administrator account, creating a new local account and deleting the problematic account.

My question is: if the situation was to happen again, but I cannot delete spare to lose data on the locked account, what should I do?

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[-] _haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Boot into the drive with a boot drive (if it's encrypted, hopefully you have the key and then you can use a DART disk), recover the data, then wipe and lay down a fresh OS.

There's other ways to do it, but IMO, it's best to start with a fresh OS (especially if you have to use Windows).

[-] BlackEco@lemmy.blackeco.com -1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

No, I don't want nor have the time to backup then reinstall the OS. I usually have at most an hour and a half to solve any issue people bring up.

this post was submitted on 19 May 2026
12 points (100.0% liked)

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