One of my long-time business clients had a dilemma in early September. They thought they forgot the password for their Windows 10 laptop they hadn’t used in months. I made a service call to their business to help recover their password. I entered different versions of the password and tried the Cap lock key also. Nothing worked and I looked over the login screen to see if anything was out of place or weird.
I noticed something odd about the screen. The Sign-In selector was set to PIN and my client uses a password. The Sign-In Option was opened and I toggled “PIN” to “Password.” There is a difference between a Windows 10 PIN and a password. My client would never get a password to work on a PIN screen.
We entered the password and it worked the first try! So be careful when using a PIN or password in Windows 10 – there is a difference.