Unshelved by Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum
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Friday, November 24, 2017

Microsoft is thwarting me

So a week or so ago my computer received the Fall Creators' Update, and it broke the ability of my computer to dismiss the lock screen after facial recognition or PIN entry. In other words, it recognises my face, or PIN, but has to have the PIN put in again before it will unlock. My settings are set to 'dismiss lock screen' in the settings for facial recognition. Unfortunately, in this case, I know the solution (after doing a little digging), but my computer is incapable of doing what is needed. That's because you have to edit the group policy on the computer so that it doesn't have the spoofing enabled (and in fact, it must be turned off), but unfortunately, I have Windows Home on my laptop and it doesn't have the group policy editor activated like in Windows Pro and Server. I've found a couple of sites that purport to be able to activate it, giving instructions and even .bat files, but they don't work on my 64-bit machine, even with the 'fix' for 64-bit machines. I worked for two days to get the stupid thing to work, and now have given up, hoping that Microsoft will fix the glitch at some point. On the other hand, I've lived with other Microsoft 'glitches' for years (don't even get me started on one at work that I've dealt with). So, I'm not holding my breath. It's just so annoying because supposedly I have the 'fix'; I just can't do it with my machine. The one thing I haven't tried is running the group policy editor on my other machine on a network, in the hopes of editing the group policy of the offending one, because my desktop was upgraded to Windows Pro at some point, and so all subsequent updates have been for Windows Pro, so it should have the group policy editor. Or I could upgrade to Pro on the laptop, but I really don't want to spend that much (roughly $100) to fix a problem generated by Microsoft's issue, and only that problem, as most of the other advantages of Windows Pro are not particularly useful to me on my laptop.

But if you are having trouble getting the lock screen to dismiss after facial recognition or PIN, and have Windows Pro, you can do a quick search to find out how to run the group policy editor and what to change. I hope this helps someone. Or if you have Home, maybe the 'fix' (easily searchable for both the code and handy-dandy .bat fixes) can help you. But it didn't help me. :( In the meantime, I've still got it set to facial recognition because I'd rather have to put the PIN in after that than put the PIN in twice. I assume it will do this if you put the %^W** password in, too, forcing you to put it in twice, or the PIN, but I haven't verified that. Good luck.

UPDATE: I was able to fix this by rolling back my driver to the one on the manufacturer's website. So apparently it was a driver issue, after all. Here is the site that contained steps for working on this issue: How to Fix Lock Screen Asks for Password Twice in Windows 10. Yay!

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