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Put Dell Inspiron 660 motherboard in new case, now password not recognized=Locked out
I had all the pieces of my Dell 660 put into a new case so I could upgrade my graphics card. Everything was swell until I powered it up. I have Windows 8 and it asked for my password, and kept giving me a "Your PC is offline. Please sign in with the last password used on this PC." message, even though the password was correct and I was connected to the internet. Changed my password on Microsoft a bazillion times, no luck. Took it to Best Buy this morning (only thing open) and was told there was no way around a microsoft password, that my only option is to wipe the drive. Anyone else have a better suggestion? Thanks in advance!
rdunnill
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March 5th, 2017 08:00
Wiping the drive is an extreme solution usually used to prepare the device for resale.
Does the machine connect to the Internet, or are you accessing Microsoft from a different one?
kirkd
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March 5th, 2017 10:00
The UEFI BIOS does not like hardware changes. You could try going to the BIOS and disabling Secure Boot and see what happens.
HuskerMom
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March 5th, 2017 11:00
Thanks, I'll remember that for next time. After a long phone call with Microsoft, they too said a factory restore was pretty much my only option. I went ahead and copied the most important things from the drive and did the restore. I found out there is a way around a local user password/account. Just not the microsoft one. So perhaps I set up one of those as well.