Question Windows 10 login works in one house but not in another ?

[paulbasel]

A friend with a 8 year old Asus notebook running Win10 called me to say that he could not login to his computer. He kept receiving the same message, "Incorrect pin" even though he knew that the pin was correct. This happened from one day to the next and he made no changes to his computer the previous day. His latest Windows update was weeks ago. I asked him to bring his computer to my home and I would reset the pin for him.

He started the computer at my home, entered his pin code and it started up normally. No error message at all. We connected to my home network, no problem, typed a short document, everything functioned as normal. We shut down the computer 3 additional times, started up again and each time he was able to login in with the pin. I checked to make sure there was only one account and indeed, there is only one.

He took it home, started it up, entered the pin and received the same message, incorrect pin! I have never seen this in all my years of working with computers. Any thoughts?

 

[Lutfij]

What sort of a distance is it between your home and your friends? Seems to me like the OS on the laptop needs a reinstall. Could've looked into a BIOS update for the laptop while you had it functional.

You also forgot to mention the model of your friend's Asus laptop.

 

[paulbasel]

We live about 5 miles apart. Why is this important? With all due respect, an OS and/or a BIOS update does not address the issue of why it works perfectly in one location and not in another. I don't know the model but does it really matter relative to this problem ?

 

[kerberos_20]

it could be network related, windows hello (pin) needs active internet, switch to password sign in, then make sure internet (probably wifi) is setup and check if windows hello in windows setting is workin and not throwing some error code (like authentication error code)

 

[ubuysa]

Assuming your friend boots the laptop on only battery power (which eliminates power as an issue) then the only difference between the two locations is Internet access - as mentioned above.

Can your friend use an Ethernet cable to connect to their router? That will eliminate WiFi as being the issue.

 

[paulbasel]

Many thanks guys. I checked the windows hello and everything looks good. I thought it might be network related. He has both ethernet and wifi and I didn't ask him which one he was using. I'll check and have him connect only with the ethernet cable and see if that makes a difference.