Recently a death has rocked our little world.
He was a friend and his family is struggling through all the processes and pain that comes with it.
One such problem is my friends personal laptop. This laptop is currently locked with his Microsoft Account(here in MSA).
And I'm wondering what can be done.
Due to poor records we CANNOT use the standard method password reset. Knowledge of security questions, previous emails, and even email usage (i can't remember the questions, who was a contact recently emailed etc) are unavailable to us as it was a registered MS account using an external email address and therefore no correspondence even exists in their box.
Now, IF the laptop was locked with a standard account, (no other users exist on the computer) we'd have no problem as there are many methods to madness in that respect (i.e local account reset).
But alas here we are with a MSA Locked computer.
We have contacted Microsoft in this matter and have hit a brick wall. We once were even told to "wait for the son to come home." Please remember they are dead. Imagine hearing that about your deceased son/friend.
We were directed to "Next of Kin process." But this only deals with data Microsoft is in control of, namley Skydrive and Email. NONE of which were used or used sparingly. But due to the fact that the MSAccount is now in full control of that data they probably should be.
What the family needs is access, access to the personal data of the deceased on the laptop that Microsoft chose to admin encrypt with their MSA information.
It boggles my mind that a company could create such a solution (Tying Local Admin Accounts to Online profiles) that they did not foresee this to be a PROBLEM.
The purpose for this question to the community is to raise awareness. There needs to be a better solution. This family is not going balk at providing documentation, or going through processes needed to reset the account (outside the norm). They are however
currently stuck with no solutions present to them. My friend didn't create this situation, Microsoft did with the account linking.
If this happened to a company MSA (admin) account they'd be out progress, money and time.
Awareness, and getting this memo on an executives desk. THAT is the purpose of this, please upvote, like, dislike, report as abuse and AGREE that a solution needs to be there for those that have this thrust upon them. A blind eye with the FURTHER integration of Windows 10 to online profiles creates even more of a NEED for extraneous solutions.
I will also be contacting Microsoft directly, if possible to help get this noticed. As we cannot be the first to find ourselves in this situation.
Thank you for your time and your patience in reading the long post.
in memory of David,
Levi