Hello everyone,
a friend of mine recently bought a second-hand laptop but, as we soon discovered, the seller left parental controls on it. The computer locks itself at a set time every day and doesn’t allow the user to log back in.
So I tried to help. I created a bootable USB with Windows 10, wiped the disk in the computer and reinstalled. Thinking I had solved the problem, as an OS reinstall should, in this case, I gave it back to my friend. I just received a message from her, that the laptop just locked itself again.
Why is this happening? Are the parental controls somehow tied to a unique identifier, such as the built-in Windows activation code or similar? And, most importantly, how do I remove them?
Thanks a lot :)
Is your friend using an online Microsoft account and not a local one? It is possible that the parental restrictions are set on their Microsoft account and not the computer.
The original one was a Microsoft account, the on my install is local
Did they then immediately activate the office 365 that their parents paid for? Make sure it’s still a local account, because Microsoft pushes pretty hard not to have those.
Funny thing is, they didn’t pay. I installed Office 365 and activated it with my own key, and you bet I haven’t put any parental control on there. I even checked if it enabled itself by chance, but it didn’t. She also signed into the PC with her account, but the issue existed before we used any Microsoft account…