How can I use a local account in Windows 10?
How can I use a local account in Windows 10?
When I took the upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10, I continued to use my local account to log on. When I had to replace my motherboard recently, I needed a 30-minute chat (and remote access) with a very helpful Microsoft tech to re-activate Win10. Hmmm. To avoid that in future, I would like to use a Microsoft account, but only to get my system details on file in case I replace another critical component.
The problem is that I’m told I need to set-up a new local account after logging on with a Microsoft account. But I don’t want to do that. I want to use my existing local account with the Microsoft one in reserve.
I understand the functionality argument for using a Microsoft account, but I am happy without any extras. I do what I want online perfectly well at the moment. Graeme
When setting up a local account in Windows 10, remember to change it to Administrator level so you can access data from your old account. Photograph: Jack Schofield
A motherboard change can look like a new PC, so you might well have needed to talk to Microsoft even if you had been using a Microsoft account. Either way, you should recognise that Windows 10 is fundamentally different from Windows 7 in at least two important ways.
First, it’s no longer a desktop operating system, it’s a mobile operating system. Some major features – including Cortana, Notifications and apps – originated in the smart phone world. As with other mobile operating systems, everything is maintained from the cloud.
Second, Windows 10 is just one part of Microsoft’s cross-platform ecosystem, which includes smartphones, tablets, the Xbox One range of games consoles, cloud-based services such as OneDrive and Office 365, and dozens of Microsoft apps on Android and Apple iOS devices. Your Microsoft account (MSA) is your key to this ecosystem. It links your data, apps and settings across multiple personal computers, smart phones and tablets.
This as a sort of Copernican revolution. In the old days, everything revolved around the PC. Today, everything revolves around the user, and users are identified by their MSAs, or their Gmail addresses, or their Apple IDs. This is the modern world: people are mobile and they use multiple devices.
So, your Windows 10 PC is no longer authenticated locally, and all your credentials are stored online against your MSA. Your cloud profile also stores your apps, preferences and settings, so if you buy a new PC, you can have it set up just like your old one. Your MSA also synchronizes bookmarks and other data across devices. For example, if you’re using the OneNote app on your Windows 10 PC, you can carry on from the same place in the OneNote app on an Android/iOS/Windows tablet or smartphone – as long as you’re using the same MSA.
What is an MSA?
The most common MSA is a Microsoft email address, which can be at Hotmail, Live, Outlook.com or some other Microsoft email service. If you don’t have an MSA, you can easily create one. This does not involve giving Microsoft your real name or any other personal information. Of course, if you want to use two-factor authentication for extra security, you will have to provide a phone number, but this can be any dumbphone that can receive an SMS text.
It is perfectly possible to create an MSA based on a Gmail or any other non-Microsoft email address. I don’t recommend this. If you’re not careful, you can end up with a Microsoft email account that can send emails “as from” Gmail etc.
All these “single sign-ons” – MSA, Gmail, Apple, Facebook etc – have the same problem: being locked out of one service can lock you out of many others. The solution is to use services from several different suppliers, rather than putting all your eggs in one basket, and to keep backups of all your cloud data.
Local accounts
You can continue to use an old Windows 7 local account in Windows 10 – as you did – but it requires some care. For example, you need an MSA to use a cloud service, such as the Windows Store. You have to look for the line that says “Sign in to this App only” every time to avoid getting your MSA attached to all the other stuff as well. If you run a Windows Store app, you will be prompted to sign on to your PC with your MSA and you must click “Sign in to just use this app instead” rather than simply clicking Next.
But, in reality, there’s no benefit to signing in to every app and service separately if you’re using the same MSA. It’s just pointless extra work.
Nonetheless, Microsoft has responded to complaints by making it much easier to use a local account in Windows 10 than it was in Windows 8. For example, you can now use Cortana and the mail, maps and music apps without an MSA, though you inevitably lose some functionality. You can’t, for example, sync data or music across devices, or use the app you paid for on one device on a different device. The gap will continue to grow as online services become more powerful.
Either way, using an MSA doesn’t stop you from using any other online services – including Microsoft services – in your web browser. I regularly log on to several different Hotmail/Outlook.com/Gmail accounts using names and passwords that are different from the MSA that I use to log on to my Windows 10 machines. Using an MSA adds features: it doesn’t take any away.
A new local
Windows 10 lets you convert Microsoft Accounts into local accounts, and vice versa. However, this means changing the features of a single account. When the MSA is created, the local account ceases to exist. Unlike Schrödinger’s cat, a Windows account can’t be both things at the same time.
Like it or not, the only solution is to open a second Administrator account to use as your local account. To do this, run the Settings app and go to Accounts, pick “Family & other people” and click “Add someone else to this PC”. When asked how this person will sign in, say you don’t know. When asked to create an account, select “Add a user without a Microsoft account”. You can then enter a user name, password, and password hint in the usual way. I have one of these extra local accounts for back-up purposes, in case my MSA gets corrupted.
When your new local account appears in Settings, click the button marked “Change account type” and change it from Standard to Administrator. Click OK and log on to your new account, which will start with the familiar Windows 10 welcome routine.
Open File Explorer, go to This PC and open the Users folder. You will now see two accounts: the original Graeme and the new Graeme_Local. Open the folder owned by the MSA (Graeme), and click Continue when told you don’t have permission. (Admins can do this.) Next, select a folder, such as Pictures, copy it (Ctrl-C), go back to Graeme_Local, and paste it in (Ctrl-V). Check that it worked. Repeat to taste.
You may have some cleaning up to do, but you can probably copy the bulk of your stuff to the local account. And if it all goes pear-shaped, log off, go back to Settings in your MSA account, remove the Graeme_Local account and try again.
Alternatively, you can copy data from your MSA account to an external hard drive and then copy it back to a new Graeme_Local account.
Of course, the new Graeme_Local account will quickly go out of sync with the old Microsoft account, but I assume you won’t care about that. In any case, one account isn’t really backing up the other: if the hard drive fails, you’ll lose data from both accounts at the same time. If this happens, you should be able to restore your stuff from an external back-up. If not, you might be sorry that you didn’t enable your MSA to preserve more of your stuff in the cloud....
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