Win10 version 2004 systemwide password “amnesia”

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This from WarningU2: I’ve made two attempts to update to 2004 without success.  2004 applies fine but I keep getting prompted for passwords to sign in
[See the full post at: Win10 version 2004 systemwide password “amnesia”]

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Great Lake Bunyip, jburk07, WarningU2, GreatAndPowerfulTech

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Could that ‘amnesia’ possibly relate to a Hello PIN issue in safemode?

If debian is good enough for NASA...

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GreatAndPowerfulTech, woody

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Good question!

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I’ll hazard a guess (hunch) at the transitional depreciation/replacement of the original MS Edge (to Chredge) that ties to the credentials manager being broken on feature upgrades but not clean 2004 installations.

If debian is good enough for NASA...

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does the “workaround” for the v2004 password amnesia problem from this Born’s blog still work, woody?
https://borncity.com/win/2020/08/13/windows-10-2004-credentials-manager-kaputt-workaround/

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GreatAndPowerfulTech, woody

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[woody]

I don’t know.

Can one of you folks experiencing the problem try Günter’s fix?

I came across this article and the post from Latest, which describes the issue of the credential management in Windows 10 May 2020 Update (version 2004) not storing passwords. The automatic login to websites and services like Outlook, Adobe Creative Cloud, OneDrive, in Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge or in VPN networks fails afterwards.

In general, a workaround is described as removing the Microsoft account from the settings page and then creating a local user account. After a restart, the local user account can be changed to a Microsoft account. Then the login should work and the login data will be saved. Anyone affected?

That’s from August – it isn’t the September cumulative update – but it is on version 2004.

What a pain. Who tests this stuff anyway?

• This reply was modified 4 years, 5 months ago by woody.

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Re Chrome vs Edge.  I’ve wondered that too.   I actually purchased Lenovo T460s laptop with Windows 2004 already applied.  No issues with credential manager.  On the new laptop to abide to MS’s wishes, I’m only using the MS account to sign in.   It was a clean install on a off lease laptop.   Now having said that I recently applied the latest Net Framework updates and it hosed the laptop.   Now it may have been my fault.   I ran the install and it did the little spiral of death for several hours without completing.   I powered down and up again and it completed successfully, or so it said.   When it came up I couldn’t get into windows > settings, error messages with various DLL files missing.  Scannow didn’t work.   I had to reinstall windows on top from a 2004 usb.   That fixed all the corrupt system files.  The reason I bring this up because I thought … here we go I bet I have the same issue now with credential manager.   But everything is ok.   I’m using Chrome as my prior browser there but the new Edge is installed.   On my main PC I am using Chrome with Edge installed as well but I suspect the install is not pristine, as I had previously removed Edge before the latest rendition.   Something has been introduced with 2004 requiring a dependency to make credential manager for either the MS account, Edge browser or <fill in the blank> .

re the workaround … I’ve removed the ms account on my PC and tried the apply of 2004 but it didn’t work.   I haven’t tried adding a ms account again and applying and then removing the account.  I’ve tried twice applying this version and I’m a little gun shy.  In the MS answers thread others have tried the add / remove ms account and some have had success but others the problem returns again.  Passwords are not remembered.

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[woody]

@PKCano picked up some other posts with very similar symptoms:\

WSBirdLady:

My husband’s computer updated itself on 9/10 after he shut it down (Windows 10 Home).  When he went to log in, he got the message “The password is incorrect.  Try again.”  We restarted several times to no avail.  I came to this trusty Windows 7 computer and started doing some searches, actually hoping it might be a general problem related to this particular update.  But I found nothing recent.  After looking on several sites, I tried using the on-screen keyboard in case the keyboard strokes weren’t being recognized, but that didn’t work.  I thought about starting in Safe Mode, but decided to try a system restore instead.  Ironically it accepted the password there!

The computer then accepted the password.  I knew another update would be forced on us, but I hoped that if the issue was related to this particular update that it would be fixed.  No luck.  It must have updated itself again last night, even though he did not turn it off, and now we are again seeing “The password is incorrect.  Try again.”

Not clear if that’s Win10 version 2004.

And an anonymous post:

I can’t log on to my computer. It says that I’ve typed in wrong password but I didn’t. Don’t know what the trouble is. It happened right after the computer updated.

Again, not clear if that’s version 2004….

• This reply was modified 4 years, 5 months ago by woody.

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Mayank Parmar has a description (dated September 5!) that certainly appears to be the same bug:

it appears that the bug is hitting apps that use DPAPI (Data Protection API) to protect user-stored credentials via Windows Credentials Manager.

Microsoft confirmed that they’re aware of the reports and are actively investigating the problem. While Microsoft told us that it’s looking into these reports about the issue, an official workaround is not yet available.

Apparently Microsoft hasn’t updated him yet.

Of course, the bug isn’t acknowledged anywhere, as best I can tell, except in private communication. There’s a workaround but it’s painful. And, of course, it isn’t listed on the official Windows Release Status page.

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jburk07, WarningU2, GreatAndPowerfulTech

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The random bugs in Windows 10 are not slowing down. I think it is appaling how bad Windows 10 updates have become. Sure, not everyone is hit with bugs on every update. The spreading out of random bugs is disturbing to me. I visited a customer’s home yesterday after Windows 10 updated his machine to v.2004. It had been running well, until yesterday. The update, in an explainable absurd move, removed the Intel video driver and changed it to Microsoft Basic Display driver. The extended desktop, 1080 p resolution, and sound were all messed up. I checked Device manager. It showed several changes made to the system with the v.2004 update. I right mouse clicked the MS Basic driver and then selected check for updates. It immediately switched to the correct driver, which brought back the extended desktop, sound and correct resolution. Since this customer uses his computer for stock trading throughout the day, he lost hours of opportunity. I suggested that if he could support a claim that this broken update cost him money, that he contact his lawyer about negotiating a settlement, as that is beyond anything I can do. I also suggested that in the future anything but Windows, as the OS on his next PC, might be better. He was simply dumbstruck that a supposedly stable OS could cause such obvious issues with an “update”.

I have about 1000 customers near me. Dozens have had issues related to Windows 10 updates over the past five years. Several, that had long-in-the-tooth PC’s, switched to Chromebooks and are happy. With Google rejiggering ChromeOS to split out the Chrome browser, Chromebooks/boxes may be the safest way to go for anyone working solely online. Windows 10 sure is longer the OS for an individual to use where time is money and the work is solely online.

GreatAndPowerfulTech

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jburk07, Graham, woody

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Both my and my wife’s work stations have been on v 2004 for three weeks now after updating after the 90 day pause period.  Neither of us have been experiencing any issues s described.  Both of us use Firefox as the browser and I have some downloaded apps, primarily video and audio (Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu) and none of them have lost a password.  Our Windows logins continue to work fine.  Bugs that impact a small percentage of uses are always the most difficult to squash.

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jburk07

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One of the users I support had this problem last week on her laptop running Win 10 Pro. Via Bomgar, I tried all of the solutions that Google turned up but nothing worked. Fortunately she was within the 10 day windows and was able to roll back to 1909. I advised her to delay feature updates for another 180 days for the time being to fend off a further pushed upgrade to 2004.

Probably coincidentally, her Zoom setting were being lost each time she restarted Zoom. I fixed this by doing an Advanced uninstall using Revo Uninstaller and Zoom was OK after the fresh install.

I have installed 2004 on my spare (10 year old Dell) desktop and it is behaving OK so far.

Arthur J Davis
UK

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jburk07

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I updated 3 PCs to V2004 over the last few days.

2 were OK, my wife’s desktop after first logging post update with a password seemed to want a PIN# when coming out of sleep mode. I showed how to go to “SignIn Options” and switch back to a password.

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jburk07

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Interesting topic. I have one laptop I rarely use and let it go to the 2004 upgrade. Wow! What a mess to login. I don’t use my MS account and even then it wanted my password (even though I choose to bypass it). Once entered, the screen went black. Yes, totally useless. I then rebooted, twice, and finally removed the battery and re-installed to get it to work. Once again I entered my password (why I don’t know) then it booted up. Yeah! Not so fast, everytime I start-up now, I’m risking a 50/50 chance of getting the black screen and starting over with battery removal/install.

In our “modern” age, I can’t (but do) believe products are released only to fail. Sad. 🙁

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WSJCitizen, woody, jburk07

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I have one customer that has been having issues that seem to be related to this since her computer upgraded to Win10 2004 a month ago. She just let me know.

Her two main issues are:

Outlook 365 (Windows app, like Outlook 2019) keeps getting disconnected from IMAP and POP3 servers. Error message with IMAP is 0x800CCC0E “Error: Cannot connect to the server”. To fix it you close Outlook, restart it, it will then prompt for passwords for each mail account. We rebuilt the Outlook profile, deleted credentials from Credential manager with no change.

Chrome – Outlook.com keeps logging out and requiring login and 2nd factor login ever couple hours. She also uses a Citrix site in Chrome which logs her out frequently, but that may be a site specific requirement. We have cleared cache/cookies and the problem persists.

Both Chrome and Outlook issues started at the same time, she thinks about a month ago. I will likely do a clean Windows 10 install to see if that fixes her issues if we don’t find another fix soon.

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It now appears there is a  means to circumvent the issue.

See https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-performance/systemwide-password-amnesia-v2004-build-19041173/232381f8-e2c6-4e8a-b01c-712fceb0e39e?messageId=5d9660ca-eb67-4bfd-aa29-ce5347632434  – for all the details but in essence it involves issuing

From the thread:

“Right-click Start>Windows Powershell(admin). Copy and paste below command

Get-ScheduledTask | foreach { If (([xml](Export-ScheduledTask -TaskName $_.TaskName -TaskPath $_.TaskPath)).GetElementsByTagName(“LogonType”).’#text’ -eq “S4U”) { $_.TaskName } }

Then based on Gabriel’s suggestion to disable/remove the HP task that was shown in the display has now allowed the users to boot up without issues! They have NOT had to enter passwords for Office/Microsoft 365 (OneDrive, Word, Outlook) and have NOT had to enter passwords to saved remote desktop sessions. One user claims that they’re still having some password memory issues with Edge, but I think that’s user error induced and not related to this issue.

Since this worked for two days I’m thinking this is a good workaround. I won’t say this FIXED the problem since there’s apparently a real bug/issue in there somewhere that really needs to be FIXED, but this is a solid work around.”

Several users have reported removing the identified tasks has resolved the issue (of continually being prompted for passwords).   This is a circumvention – not a fix.

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snissen, woody

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[WarningU2]

I identified HP Customer Satisfaction task from the command and deleted.   I then applied the troublesome 2004 update and unlike other times, no need to input passwords continuously – at least so far.   If it lasts 48 hours then I know the circumvention works.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 4 months ago by WarningU2.

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Thanks for the update @WarningU2 .  In my case the script showed that the Carbonite upgrade scheduled task “{5F6010C8-60E5-41f3-BF5B-C3AF5DBE12D4}” was using S4U for logging in.  I did not want to disable or delete it since I wanted Carbonite to stay up to date so I changed from “Run whether user is logged on or not” to “Run only when user is logged in” as suggested in the answers.microsoft.com thread.  This changed the S4U to InteractiveToken.  It’s been 24 hours now running v2004 and it’s running OK so far.

BTW, I started with Langlist in the early 2000s and Windows Secrets back in at least 2008.  I’m glad the “old” crew is back.  🙂

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[Lanyap]

Here is a recent update by someone at Microsoft in the chromium bug thread referred to in the answer.microsoft.com link.
https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1069383#c100

Comment 100 by *** Email address is removed for privacy *** on Tue, Oct 20, 2020, 12:52 PM EDT (a day ago)Labels: -Needs-Triage-M80

RE #99: We (Microsoft) are working on a fix for this issue, but due to the nature of WindowsUpdates, it will unfortunately be a while longer until we can release it via a monthly servicing update. For the moment, the workaround of avoiding S4U is the only one available.

 

• This reply was modified 4 years, 4 months ago by Lanyap.

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Thanks for the update Lanyap and I see you updated the amnesia post too in Microsoft Answers (sic)  – thanks.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/insider/forum/all/systemwide-password-amnesia-v2004-build-19041173/232381f8-e2c6-4e8a-b01c-712fceb0e39e?page=23

I wonder how this issue was introduced?  Was it the new Edge browser?   Excuse my ignorance but that is what Edge uses … chromium ,,, isn’t it?

Their reasoning for not getting the fix sooner is disturbing since this has been many months now and effecting a lot of corporate clients.

🙂 Like you I also started with Langlist and then Windows Secrets.

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Hello!

I also had this problem after installing a new HP printer and using the PowerShell command returns a task related to that printer.

I stoped this task and the credential problem went away, however it seems that task is needed if I want to print from that computer.

Anyone also had same problem, having to choose between printer working or keeping credentials?

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You don’t need HP software to print. Windows should have a driver built-in that allows the printer to work.

Assuming it’s only a USB connected printer, uninstall and HP software and delete the printer from Control Panel. Then reboot the PC and let Windows reinstall the driver.

cheers, Paul

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