How to Fix Windows 10 Won’t Accept Password at Login

Microsoft pays a great deal of attention towards the security and privacy of the user of the system. Microsoft tends to make their system potentially secure along with the simplification of the user interface. Hence, with the release of Windows 10, Microsoft polished the login screen quite effectively. Also, some critical changes were made to the “Windows protected storage” service to increase the security of the system. Users of Windows can now use PINs or Passwords to access their system securely. 

Unfortunately, unlike any other operating system available in the market, Microsoft Windows is not perfect and users of Windows find themselves struggling with a newfound bug every now and then. Some of these bugs are quite irritating and makes no sense. One of these annoying issues is “Windows 10 won’t accept password at login”. Multiple users have reported going through this problem. The reason behind this problem is so irritating is that the user knows the password of the system to be correct and put it correctly in the system, still being unable to loing to system. This issue can occur at the time of fresh boot or could be even after you access the system after multiple hours in sleep mode.

Users have also complained about Windows 10 having a similar issue while entering to Safe Mode.

Windows 10 Doesn’t Accept My Password

There could be multiple possible explanations behind this error. It could be either corrupted system files or some bad sectors generated in your hard drive which are not accessible by the operating system. In short, if the error is not caused by the human error from the user side, it can happen most probably because of the communication barrier between system and hardware. If you use an active internet connection on the system, the probable core of the issue would be desynchronization of the system with the cloud servers of Microsoft.

How to Fix Windows 10 won’t Accept Password

Here are some of the methods that you can try to fix this issue.

Method 1: Use virtual keyboard to enter the password

This might seem a little ludicrous, but it is possible that the keyboard you are currently using is the reason you are repeatedly entering the wrong password without acknowledging it. It could be because of the damaged keyboard membrane or some keyboard driver issue. So, It is better to rule out the common aberration before going any further.

1. You can use the virtual keyboard by accessing the “Ease of access” option provided in the lower right corner of your screen.
2. Once you click on it, it will open the list of available accessibility features. You will find “Virtual keyboard” option in the list.
3. Click on the “”Virtual keyboard” option to open the keyboard. Use the software keyboard to enter your password.

If you have successfully verified that the reason behind the problem is not the keyboard, you can safely move forward to administer other solutions.

Method 2: Reset password using Microsoft online account recovery

You can apply this solution even if you are not able to log into your PC. You can use any other device with a secure internet connection and a browser to get this done. All you have to do is go to the address “account.live.com/password/reset“, and reset your password by following the instructions provided on the website.

You should have access to your email address or phone number which you used to create the account in the first place to be able to reset the password. Microsoft will send a secure one-time-password (OTP) on your registered email address or phone number which you can use to verify the ownership of the account. After that, Microsoft will allow you to change the password.

Once you have changed the password, try to enter the new password in your PC’s sign-in window. You should be able to successfully access the account now without any hassle.

Method 3: Use the secondary Windows 10 admin account

This method will surely get you out of this problem if you have a secondary account present in your system. You can either boot into existing secondary account or you can create one using the command prompt available in WinRE(Windows Recovery Environment). You can use the built-in admin account to resolve this issue without any trouble. All you have to do is remove your primary Microsoft account and add it again. This will resolve the desynchronization with the Microsoft servers that might be the cause of the problem.

To use your secondary account to solve this issue, Follow these steps:

1. Log in through the secondary account. (if available)
2. After you are in the system, right click on the start icon and click on the command prompt.
3. Put the following command in the command prompt and press enter.
   

   net user Administrator /active:yes

4. Now, a sign-in account will be created named as “Admin”. If you log in through this account, you should be able to access the admin privileges.
5. Now, to remove the Microsoft account, Open start menu and search “User accounts”
6. Press enter to open the account management window.
7. In the “Other People” section, you will see the Guest account. Left click on the account and then select “Remove” option to remove the account from your system.
8. You should be able to add the account back again without any issue.

Method 4: Perform a Clean Boot

You can avoid the interference of third-party application at the time of boot by performing a clean boot. To perform a clean boot:

1. Access the system using the secondary admin account.
2. Click on start and type “msconfig” and press enter to open the system configuration window.
   
3. In the system configuration window, click on “Services”. Then make sure that “Hide all Microsoft services” box is checked and click on “Disable all” button.
   
4. Now, Click on “Startup”. Then click on “Open task manager”.
   
5. Now, you can disable the startup services which you don’t require by simply selecting the service and clicking on “Disable”.
   
6. Now, the system will reboot without any third-party application. (i.e., Clean boot). This will prevent the interference of newly installed software in the sign-in process and you should be able to enter the system.

Even after trying above methods if you still can’t login to your  Windows 10, then last option left is to Reset Windows 10 or Reinstall.