Question "Something happened and your PIN isn't available" - - - what happened?

[Minaz]

I was doing some pretty routing stuff on my Windows 11 PC - I had a Youtube video on a browser window open, and I was updating Launchbox at the same time (takes a while), and I went away for a drink, when I came back, my screen lock was set and face recognition didn't work. Trying my PIN, I got the message in the title "Something happened and your PIN isn't available" and was told I had to reset my PIN.

In the latest version of Windows, you can't even log in with your password unless you say you forgot your PIN (I guess its a security feature) so that's what I did, and through 2FA was able to log in again and reset my PIN.

Everything was as I left it - Launchbox was updating my catalog, the Youtube video was paused where I had paused it.

I checked:
- no Windows update available
- DISM and SFC reported no errors
- CHKDSK /V on C: reported no errors
- CrystalDiskInfo did not raise any warning flags on any drive

I went to a different computer (before I reset the PIN) and the PIN worked just fine.

So what indeed happened? Why would my PIN just fail? My immediate guess was HDD failure but so far the diagnostics do not seem to show anything. Is there something else going on?

 

[Ralston18]

"Something just happened"....

Look in Reliability History/Monitor and Event Viewer.

Either one or both tools may have captured some error code, warning, or even an informational event just before or at the time that that "something" happened.

Reliabillity History/Monitor is end user friendly and the timeline format may reveal some pattern.

Event Viewer requires more time and effort to navigate and understand.

To help:

How To - How to use Windows 10 Event Viewer | Tom's Hardware Forum (tomshardware.com)

Take your time, be methodical, and just look.

If proven to be a single one time occurence then it could have been some passing gremlin.

That said, now is a very good time (as you should always be doing anyway) to ensure that all important data is backed up to at least 2 different locations away from the computer in question.

Verify that the backups are both recoverable and readable.

Gemlins can and do return.

 

[Colif]

easier option could have been to run system restore.

its not a common problem but it does happen sometimes - https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...vailable/5365fc65-27a9-4ec6-b9c3-032b54da50f9

Most of those suggestions are safe though I wouldn't jump into a reset lightly.
Your fix is another way I guess.