[Workaround] Not able to login to their user profile - Build 20226

Some of the Windows Insiders had reported that in the recently released Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 20226 in Dev channel were not able to log into their User's profile. Here's a workaround released by Microsoft for the same. 

EDIT: This scenario could impact users in the Dev Channel (only) on builds 19593 through 20226.  The same workaround applies to any user in this build range in the Dev Channel who experiences this scenario.

The following message was seen by the affected users:

 

Workaround:  

The workaround applies only to builds 19593 through 20226 on the Dev channel.  It does not apply to Retail users, or users in the Beta or Release Preview Channels..

*If your account is an Administrator account on the affected device, follow these steps to bypass this issue:

1. When you see the “We can’t sign into your account” dialogue, click the Close button.
2. Open an elevated Command Prompt window.
3. Enter and submit the following commands one line at a time:
   • cd c:\users\%username%
   • takeown /F ntuser.dat*
   • icacls ntuser.dat* /reset
   • icacls ntuser.dat* /setowner "SYSTEM"
4. Sign out.
5. You will stop seeing the above dialog on your next sign-in.

Please note that the steps assumes your Windows installation is defaulted to the C: drive.  If you have installed Windows on a different drive letter, please replace c: with the proper drive letter for your installation.

*If your account is NOT an Administrator account on the affected device, follow these steps to bypass this issue:

1. When you see the “We can’t sign into your account” dialogue, click the Close button.
2. Open a standard Command Prompt window.
3. Enter the following command:
   • Echo %username%
   • (Make note of the returned username, you will use it in step 6)
4. Close the standard Command Prompt window.
5. Open an elevated Command Prompt window.
6. Enter and submit the following commands one line at a time:
   • cd c:\users\username
   • takeown /F ntuser.dat*
   • icacls ntuser.dat* /reset
   • icacls ntuser.dat* /setowner "SYSTEM"
7. Sign out
8. You will stop seeing the above dialog on your next sign-in

 If the above steps doesn't resolve the issue, then you will have to rollback to previous build to bypass. Then you will have to reinstall build 20226 and you will not encounter this issue the second time.

Microsoft Windows Insider Team has identified the cause of the bug and a fix is under development.

(source: Microsoft Answers Forum)

Post2Beat challenge for Microsoft Forum contributors

If you are a Microsoft Forum contributor, here’s a fun challenge! This is for all those Community Contributors who love to share knowledge with everyone via the Microsoft Forum Posts.

One has to Register for the Post2Beat challenge and maximize Forum Contributions and be a winner.

• This challenge is open to everyone from India, Nepal and Bangladesh.
• Microsoft Forums namely MSDN, TechNet, Community, ASP.net and IIS.net are considered for this challenge.
• Post2Beat is open from Dec 23, 2014 to Jan 22, 2015.
• One doesn’t have to report about ones Forum points/contribution but just have to register with your Forum Profile. Contributions will be reviewed on the last day of Post2Beat Challenge and winners will be notified via email and also will be announced during South Asia MVP Open Day 2015 (Jan 22-24) at Bangalore.

Please check http://post2beat.sageframe.co/ for registering and other details.

Get Recognized by Microsoft for your Forum Contribution

Microsoft is soon coming out with an award program called Microsoft Community Contributor Award for recognizing those who contribute to various Microsoft Technical Forums such as MSDN, TechNet and Answers.

Microsoft is going to recognize those who contribute in such Microsoft Forums in the areas of moderation, content, translation/localization and feedback. The Award is awarded based on previous year’s contribution and the Award last for a year.

Awardees will receive a customized certificate, program logo with the award year, and a complimentary online technical resource.

More information about the Microsoft Community Contributor Award program can be found at http://www.microsoftcommunitycontributor.com

How does Microsoft select recipients of the Microsoft Community Contributor Award? 
More and more technology users are seeking ideas and solutions for enhancing their technology experience through online resources. Microsoft reviews the contributions of participants who offer their time and energy to online technical communities such as Answers, MSDN and TechNet to identify those who make notable contributions for possible recognition as a Microsoft Community Contributor. In addition, Microsoft Community Contributors can be recommended by Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals, who serve as deep technical experts and thought leaders in the community.

For more such FAQs, please check - https://www.microsoftcommunitycontributor.com/faq.aspx

Zune Community at Microsoft Answers launched

Microsoft has just launched a new community for Zune at Microsoft Answers. Microsoft Answers is a community-based support site where you can ask and answer questions, or just browse other's answers.

With Windows Phone 7 being launched which has the Zune , the Zune Answers has a complete section for it.

Check Zune Answers community site.

[FIX] ‘No Internet Connection…’ Error during installation of Windows Live Essentials Beta Refresh

Yesterday an update to Windows Live Essentials 2011 beta was released. And while installing some faced problem where they were getting the error message “No Internet Connection…” and the installation failed even though they were connected to net. It was happening even using the Full offline installer.

Soon Windows Live Team swung into action and said -

“The problem you're running into is that the Windows Live Installer not only installs the language you selected, but also tries to install the Windows Live language resources that match your OS language (this avoids language switching problems later when using Windows Live client applications).  Unfortunately, the Windows Live Beta Refresh only ships in nine languages (much more coming for the final release) and when the installer tries to find these additional language resources, they are unavailable and hence the error you are seeing.  This error will occur in both the online web-version (wlsetup-web.exe) and the off-line version (wlsetup-all.exe). 

This will not be a problem in the final release as all languages will be available, but we're investigating workarounds such as temporarily changing your OS language settings and will post info here once a workaround has been confirmed to be effective.”

So one has to temporarily change their OS language to English and install.

 

Today they have fixed it and they have posted this -

 

“A fix for the "no internet connection" error you encountered has been released.  Please retry and reply if you continue to see errors in your installation experience.

Root cause is that we added functionality to the Windows Live Installer to also install language resources matching the Windows OS language and mistakenly included references to languages that are not available until the final Windows Live release.  Users installing on an OS language other than one of the nine languages released for Windows Live would have encountered this failure (English is just another language and not a unique cause of this error). 

We apologize for the negative experience and inconvenience and appreciate you using Windows Live and for providing feedback.  From this, we are updating our release tools to detect and avoid this problem in the future and investigating changing our error messages to be more helpful.”

Access Microsoft Forums with newsreader using Forums NNTP Bridge

If you are one of those who likes to be participating in various Online Microsoft Forums like MSDN, TechNet, Answers etc then here’s a nice way to interact with Microsoft Forums using NNTP readers connecting them via Microsoft Forums NNTP Bridge from your desktop. If you do not like to connect different Microsoft Forums using web interface then this is the best method where you will have access to hundreds of Microsoft Forums from your NNTP Newsreader. This is very convenient where you can read and write posts offline from your desktop.

This can be done by using Microsoft Forums NNTP Bridge Beta December release which is made available on Connect. Only registered Connect members can get it from here. From the link one can also find out more about the bridge.(Update: direct connect link: https://connect.microsoft.com/site/sitehome.aspx?SiteID=927 )

“The NNTP Bridge Beta is a small client application that exists alongside your newsreader that allows you read/write access to popular Microsoft forums such as the Answers, MSDN and TechNet forums. It’s designed to allow you to download current forum messages into the newsreader of your choice, respond in an offline scenario if you so choose, and upload responses.”

Now let us see how to use our NNTP reader to access Microsoft Forums-

To use the bridge, users need a current forums profile which the Users of Microsoft Forum will already have and ensure you have selected “Use NNTP Bridge” in the forums setting page. So just sign-in into any of the Microsoft Forums, click on My settings-

and check the “Use NNTP Bridge” in the settings page.

And then click on Submit to save the changes.

Now from the Connect link download the December bits of Microsoft Forums NNTP Bridge beta. Unzip and run setup.exe , Accept the license agreement and follow the instructions to complete the setup.

Now once its installed, you’ll find a shortcut under Microsoft Community Tools to run this application. Run it.

Click on Start to run the NNTP Bridge.

It will prompt you for Windows Live ID Credentials, sign-in with your LiveID with which you used to sign-in to the Microsoft Forums.

if you click on settings tab you can see them already filled up.

Now once you sign-in, the server is running

Minimize it .

Now we will configure our Newsreader. I am using Windows Live Mail for this -

Click on the Newsgroups to open it

Click on ‘Add newsgroup account’ to add a new group and follow the instructions -

Enter your name , click Next

When it asks for your NNTP server name give 127.0.0.1 and port as 119 if required, click Next

It will start the process of connecting to server

After some time , it will ask you to view the list of available newsgroups, click yes

It will start downloading all the lists available, this may take some time as it downloads more than 2000 list names of Microsoft Forums in all languages

So now you can see the complete list of Microsoft Forums available

From this you can subscribe to the Forums , you are interested in, from Answers, TechNet, MSDN ….by selecting and subscribing

Once done you can synchronize, read , post to the Forum .

That’s all, so whenever you want to access Microsoft Forums using Newsreader , start the NNTP Bridge first.

Some Q & A -

Q: Which NNTP clients does the Microsoft Forums NNTP Bridge Client Beta support?

A: Our priority and effort for support will be the following clients in Windows 7 OS:

Microsoft Outlook Express
Microsoft Windows Mail
Microsoft Windows Live Mail

Q: Which languages are supported in this release of the Microsoft Forums NNTP Bridge Client Beta?

A: The NNTP Bridge Beta supports posting in the same languages supported by the Microsoft forums: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Russian, Czech, Japanese, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Korean, Portuguese-Brazilian.

Q: Which newsreaders have been specifically tested for use with the Microsoft Forums NNTP Bridge Client Beta?

A: The NNTP Bridge Beta has been designed to work with any newsreader. It’s been specifically tested for use with Outlook Express, Windows Mail, and Windows Live Mail.

Previous users of the bridge should ensure they have done the following when updating to the most current version.

· Uninstall previous beta installations

· After installing the most current update, re subscribe to all of the previously subscribed groups

This December NNTP Bridge Beta Update dramatically improved stability and robustness of the connection. As you know its still work in progress so there may be some issues about which you can provide feedback.

So you should also go through the User guide, FAQ and ReadMe at the Connect site for additional information.

Microsoft Answers- now for Windows Live

If you have any queries related to Windows Live and needs help or just want to help others by solving Windows Live related queries, you now have recently launched Microsoft Answers for Windows Live  Here you can ask your doubts and also get involved in the community answering others queries. 

At present its having following categories -

Family Safety

Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, & FrameIt

Sync & Devices

Events & Toolbar

This forum is launched initially in English and later it will expand into other languages and also more Windows Live categories. Microsoft Answers will expand further in the days to come. http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windowslive/default.aspx

 

 

It is a great place for Windows Live Essentials users to offer tips and advice, get their queries answered, collaborate together to improve the experience of Windows Live and be a part of the community. Here you will get your queries answered from other community members , MVPs and from Experts from Microsoft.

 

BTW have you tried the Cool new Windows Live Movie Maker? If not check it out how easy it is to make your own Movies with all the transition effects, titles etc , Get Windows Live Essentials from here : http://download.live.com/