Windows 10 Rant. Installing Killer Instinct hijacked admin account.

[TechBoyJK]

Mild rant:

I have a friend staying at the house for a week, and he's a big fan of Killer Instinct. He owns it on XB1, but doesn't have the system with him.

He mentions that when he bought KI, it said his license and user account/saved games would work with the PC version as well, and he could download it for free. Basically, he bought a license that's good for both XB1 and PC.

So I tell him to go ahead and install it on the media PC I have hooked up to my big screen in the living room. It's windows 10, and I set it up with a basic, local account with the owner account named 'user'.

Apparently, to play KI on the PC, you have to install Games for Windows, or at least sign into it. So he signed in... and from there, somehow it converted my local 'USER' owner account to his XBOX account, changed the desktop, etc. The 'USER' account no longer works or exists, and I need to know his email/password to login to the computer.

WTF.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

Is it possible that it activated the Win10 "live" account feature or whatever? Where it authenticates to MS for logins akin to a domain? Should be a way to turn that off.

Pretty crap btw, game's a game, not an OS viking.

 

[DaveSimmons]

This is why you don't ever let someone else install applications on your PCs.

"Is it OK to reformat the hard drive? [ OK ] [ Cancel ] " -- friend clicks OK

"Can Microsoft come to your house and drink all your beer? [ OK ] [ Cancel ]"

 

[aigomorla]

did you try this?
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...m/e4f18771-4882-400f-bbcc-f19a4cd3fa9b?auth=1

i also think its what osiris states.
he associated your windows 10 live account onto your OS.

> Go to your start button

> go up to the top and click on your profile name/account

> then click "change account settings"

> in the "your account" tab, just above your account picture there will be an option to select a button saying "log on using local account" or "change log on to local account" (something along these lines)

> click this, and it will give you an opportunity to (from now on) log onto your computer using a new password that IS NOT linked to your Hotmail or Microsoft account.



Then when you use the admin as the account name, it will complain that the account is already in use. So use a different name, say tmp.



It will ask you to save your work and logout (but may not give you a chance to save ) Proceed to finish the process/logout.



Now login to an admin account (either the new "tmp" account if it was administrator or the other one that you created).

Go to control panel, user accounts and eventually find the setting to rename an account.

Rename the tmp account (now delinked from online account) back to the name it was.

logout and back in.

You are set.

This is why you don't ever let someone else install applications on your PCs.

I also agree with this statement.
Dont let anyone install or upgrade or do anything with your personal PC.
Unless that guy / girl happened to build you the box, or you feel his level of knowledge is equal or greater then yours, just dont let them touch it.

I dont even let anyone go on chrome on my main pc in fear they might download malware.
They need to check something out on the internet real quick? oh here's my tablet.. knock yourself out.

 

[Aikouka]

What happened is that he probably signed into the Xbox Marketplace app with his username and password so he could get Killer Instinct. When this happens, Windows 10 will pop up a message saying, "Hey, buddy! Would you like to switch to a Live account so you don't have to sign in again? Man... that sure would be a time-saver, huh!?" If you do this, it will change your local account to be replaced by this new Live account amalgamation.

I made this mistake once, and I highly advise against it for any sort of power user. The biggest problem that I ran into is that I could never figure out how to authenticate remote access using the local account. I was testing a piece of software that could remotely update programs for me to see if I'd use it on my HTPCs to update stuff like Plex, and I could never log in. I ended up scrapping the account and creating a new one.

 

[TechBoyJK]

This guy has built a few boxes before. He just hasn't really messed with Windows 10, and I didn't expect installing a game to change the OS in anyway. Granted, this was just a basic media rig I have setup for my tv, and not my gaming rig or production box, of which I won't let anybody touch because of shart like this.

 

[smackababy]

So, you let someone do something with your computer. And it's now messed and Microsoft's and Windows 10 fault?

 

[VashHT]

Yeah the MS account is all unified now, my Xbox live account is the same as the one I login to on Win10. Should just be able to log out of his and switch back to yours I would think.

 

[newkopi]

did you try this?
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...m/e4f18771-4882-400f-bbcc-f19a4cd3fa9b?auth=1

i also think its what osiris states.
he associated your windows 10 live account onto your OS.





I also agree with this statement.
Dont let anyone install or upgrade or do anything with your personal PC.
Unless that guy / girl happened to build you the box, or you feel his level of knowledge is equal or greater then yours, just dont let them touch it.

I dont even let anyone go on chrome on my main pc in fear they might download malware.
They need to check something out on the internet real quick? oh here's my tablet.. knock yourself out.

Thanks for link suggest

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

So, you let someone do something with your computer. And it's now messed and Microsoft's and Windows 10 fault?

Ordinarily this is the camp I fall into, but any time I'm working with IT infrastructure and I walk over a damn landmine left by some pointy-haired manager/dev/whatever I have a hard time blaming the user. It's happened enough times with MS for me to almost write them off as being less user-friendly than *nix at this point. At least with *nix you have to run the command to perform the function, instead of accidentally falling over the function doing something unrelated.

 

[sweenish]

Title should be along the lines of "Allowed friend to merge accounts, now have a merged account."

There was nothing to stumble over. They just didn't read. It did exactly what it said it would do.

 

[nathanddrews]

When you are using a local account, there's an option when installing apps from the Windows Store that will pop up giving you the choice to use that Microsoft Account for all apps or just that one app. I made that same mistake once, never again.

Also, Microsoft's inability to merge or migrate accounts is absolutely retarded. The five step process to move Xbox Live to a new email address is the most ridiculous, requiring multiple-day cooldowns on a couple of the steps. It's as though they hate their long-term customers an awful lot.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

So, you let someone do something with your computer. And it's now messed and Microsoft's and Windows 10 fault?

I have to agree. It sounds like the account was upgraded from a local user account to a windows live account which is their cloud based shenanigans.

Like most things in windows it can be controlled with group policy settings, which allow admins of domains or even just individual computers to set policy related to windows, features and security. I believe this guide will allow you to prevent account conversion in future for any local accounts. https://www.petri.com/use-group-policy-to-stop-linking-microsoft-accounts-to-local-domain-logins

Keep in mind that it's a user account preference to covert or not, so doesn't inherently require administrator access to the PC, the GPO override is there however to allow you to do ask you're asking, and have the admin set policy to deny this from occurring. Which seems reasonable to me.

Group policy is super powerful for restricting what user accounts can do on a PC you own and it's worth knowing if you run PCs and delegate account access to friends/family but don't want them to be able to change specific things. And yes users do stupid things, always operate under the assumption they will, I was a systems administrator for a decade, trust me