An issue occurred and your pin is unavailable.
An issue occurred and your pin is unavailable.
I turned off secure boot to enable dual booting of Windows and Linux, but now my Windows won’t let me log in. I’m seeing an error message about PIN availability and am redirected to my Microsoft account for setup, yet I can’t access it because Microsoft claims their system is locked due to a security issue. I’ve tried secure boot and restoring from a previous backup, but nothing works. I have all my family’s photos and ten years of personal pictures stored here.
If you only need your pictures transferred, Linux works well. Just install the necessary software to use the NTFS file system and you should be able to access them. I faced a similar problem before and had to enable an administrator account via command line. A helpful Reddit thread explains the process: https://www.reddit.com/r/WindowsHelp/com...t/j2dbg2p/
Secure Boot saves a PIN in the UEFI settings. When you reset the CMOS or turn off Secure Boot, the PIN is removed from the UEFI. That’s why I keep Secure Boot disabled. The PIN exists in the Microsoft account used during Windows installation—you can get it back there, but you’ll need to enable Secure Boot first.
It's odd I disabled secure boot before and didn't encounter any issues. Since I'm using Fedora, it seems unnecessary to turn it off.
After you recover the photos, create several backups in different locations—such as a portable drive, cloud storage, etc.—to ensure redundancy. This way, even if one or a few fail, your photos remain safe. Just like I discovered the hard way as a kid, it’s important to know proper backup methods now. If the phone won’t boot and you can’t access the data, consider professional recovery options like swapping the battery or board.