Stuck after Explorer patch bug - can't login

Hi,

my mother's machine got bitten by the change Microsoft did deliberately sending explorer patcher in an endless crash loop

we could get to task manager just, but wasn't stable enough to kill anything... in the end trying, the machine has magically forgotten all her correct login info and now we are stuck

Pin known - but won't accept
Password known - but won't accept
Three security questions known - but won't accept
Finger print scanner used to work - but now won't

and extraordinarily they deliberately killed restore points from recovery environment - so can't give that a go or it would have been back up and running in 5 minutes

seems thousands of people are having issues with microsoft ignoring correct login data - is there anything I can try ?
the two hour lie of power via mains and wait 2 hours without touching anything - to get the PIN to re-enable - brought back the Fingerprint option but its not recognised.... of course it did nothing to help with the PIN

today I went on her Microsoft account to find it knows the machine but nothing there that helps...
its rather pathetic it clearly identifies her as the user but accepts nothing - anyone got any ideas...

You should regain control of your system after a minimum of two hours.
Leave it alone. Do not try to log in anymore.

When you are able to log back in, this is what to do to stop the loop.

After you are logged in:

After your login, and between the flashes, press CTRL Alt DEL (at the same time)
Choose Task Manager
Select in the top left menu, Run new task as Admin.
1- Type in cmd (press enter)
2- Type in cd c:\ (press enter)
3- Type in cd %ProgramFiles%\ExplorerPatcher (press enter)
4- Type in cp ep_setup.exe ep_uninstall.exe (press enter)
5- Type in ep_uninstall.exe (press enter)

This will give you back control of your system.

MS warned users against using Explorer Patcher & other programs as they interfere with the OS functionality.

thanks, will give it a try

if Microsoft would stop messing with a tools we buy - deliberately making it slower and harder to operate - then we wouldn't have to try and get it back to something usable with third party tools

if they didn't have such a monopoly people would be free to vote with their feet and microsoft would have been rightfully dead many years ago - and much of the world would be a safer, better, and far happier place

imagine if we didn't have half the world fighting deliberate issues, we might have saved global warming and many other important matters already - after 20 years fighting I ought to know you can wipe and reinstall things in a few hours of wasted hell - instead of trying to clear one row of deliberately badly written code loitering somewhere in the OS over a 2 week nightmare

botus said:

thanks, will give it a try

if Microsoft would stop messing with a tools we buy - deliberately making it slower and harder to operate - then we wouldn't have to try and get it back to something usable with third party tools

if they didn't have such a monopoly people would be free to vote with their feet and microsoft would have been rightfully dead many years ago - and much of the world would be a safer, better, and far happier place

imagine if we didn't have half the world fighting deliberate issues, we might have saved global warming and many other important matters already - after 20 years fighting I ought to know you can wipe and reinstall things in a few hours of wasted hell - instead of trying to clear one row of deliberately badly written code loitering somewhere in the OS over a 2 week nightmare

Click to expand...

Try Linux.
But before you do, update Explorer Patcher (still free AFIK):

Maybe just don't use explorer patcher. There are other ways to make Windows 11 more useable and more like Windows 10. Or if she preferred Windows 10 you could just reinstall Windows 10! It's still supported for another couple of years. But make sure you back up all files and bookmarks before changing anything.

Before it was known that EP had been damaged by Microsoft's childishness, I just thought it was a 90 year old fiddling with stuff they shouldn't - so I'd managed to get into msconfig and turned off lots of rubbish - I presume in a moment of deliberate vandalism by ms, that disables the user account info so it won't boot no matter what now?

as I said if they hadn't deliberately turned off restore in RE we wouldn't be be here....

when I have to start again is the consensus win 10 is a less hideous mess of rubbish to put on this horrible HP thing?

Which HP computer is it? My thought was - if she only had explorer patcher to make Windows 11 more like Windows 10, then easier to just install Windows 10. I have two HP laptops - one on Windows 10, one on Windows 11 and use both daily. I am more familiar with Windows 10 over a long period of time so tend not to get glitches.

HP pavilion 15-eg0xxx with 8 gig of ram about 18 months old Win11 2009 10.0.22621.1413

There are a lot of things we can gripe about when it comes to MS, but one cannot bitch at MS if one chooses to alter Windows GUI.
It is the app developer's responsibility to update their app and the user's responsibility to apply such update on his system (or remove the app)prior to any major windows update.

In last month's cumulative release notes it says " After installing this or later updates, Windows devices with some third-party UI customization apps might not start up. These third-party apps might cause errors with explorer.exe that might repeat multiple times in a loop. The known affected third-party UI customization apps are ExplorerPatcher and StartAllBack. These types of apps often use unsupported methods to achieve their customization and as a result can have unintended results on your Windows device."

This same notice pops up in other cumulatives as well.

I beg to differ, the GUI is nasty and unusable and has been since win 8 and is progressively being dimmed down and down for idiots - and to stop normal people being able to use the thing properly, the updates - all 4 gig every other day - self install and are slowly converting it from a PC into and unusable peice of junk to provide three year olds with feature no one ever wanted...

anyway - the next 2 hr time wasting idea didn't work

I don't understand MS's game

the PIN clearly says lost the plot, you need to do something else (OK, I can sort of accept that)
the PASSWORD appears to be in the exact same situation (just lies I got them wrong when I haven't) - try another method
the THREE SECURITY questions again doesn't say it's forgotten them (just lies I got them wrong when I haven't) - try another method
botht he password and the security questions leave you to just try over and over in a time wasting exercise )

And on BOTH the password and the security questions on 3 separate occasions (password twice) if runs off and throws the dotted circle of its confusion, pretending it was happy - wastes 2 minutes then says Oh No you go them wrong - and you are back to square one

as MS knows the machine why isn't there a pay $10 and we'll give you a bypass code

after all there is no such thing as security on a windows machine - the FBI have a loop hole and microsoft has been running a keylogger since they invented win10 so they know every password, let alone the always on spy on you microphone

I never said we can't find things to gripe about with MS. I said it's nonsense to gripe about GUI issues when one uses a third party tool to alter it.
I do agree that all the rigamarole with using a MS account is garbage. But it's easy enough to switch to a local account and not too difficult to set up a local account from the get-go if one wants to go to the trouble of learning how.

There are things about every single release of Windows that folks do not like. I count myself in the group. This is even more true now that MS is concentrating more on security. Something that people fail to understand though is, unlike Windows, certain mainstream OSes like Apple won't allow any alteration at all over and above what its settings allow. Right now, windows users can change things in the registry. There may come a day when MS locks us out of certain areas there as well. Linux distros is another option and theyare pretty flexible.

We're not forced to use Windows. We either adapt, find workarounds, or use an alternative OS. It's made clear in MS EULA that the OS does not belong to us. We only have a right to use it. MS is gonna do what MS is gonna do and they can't and won't please everyone, I may grumble about change so I adapt as most people here have.

All that said, if you continue to be unable to login in and plan on reinstalling the OS, it's your choice whether or not to install 10. If it was me and I was able to live with 11's GUI, I would download the Windows 11 iso, use Rufus to create install media selecting the option to bypass both MS account and use local account instead. I would also choose the option in Rufus to disable bitlocker device protection. If 11's GUI is a complete dealbreaker, then choose to install 10.

Whatever you choose to do, I strongly suggest you develop some sort of backup solution to protect yourself in the future.

progress report... if you don't like my terminology bare in mind I'm advanced idiot, not an IT super hero

well having gone all the way to wipe out "it now seems" that between HP and Microsoft they removed the storage drivers (or its ability to recognise the hard-drive - which to a casual idiot user like me is utterly impossible as I'm seeing it boot to the windows screen and user login so it MUST be using the hard drive !!!) .

Putting rufus 3.22 and the latest win 11 iso on a stick - it brought up more RE elements but NONE would function.

restore said something like can't restore this drive its not there ???
start up repair said something like you can't repair this drive its not there, remove the USB, boot into windows and try from there !!!!
uninstall updates said no to both choices
etc.

gave up went on to repair this PC from the iso and it said can't to either option - basically couldn't do anything
so went stuff it reinstall windows and it said you can't there is no harddrive or no drivers for one - what kind of JUNK installer are MS peddling do drivers to load its own OS on a normal modern PC ???

so went on to HP site to find storage driver -
type in model - not recognised
type in product id - not recognised

went on to google
typed the same numbers and characters in and got to HP's own site for this machine !!!!

downloaded the driver, unzipped threw on rufus win 11 image - why is they NO folder for this ?
unbelievably on root of drive it didn't destroy anything, trawled through multiple hoops trying to browse for some junk the machine recognised as a storage driver - third folder in the list and up sprung all the drive partitions

at this point I rebooted hoping the PC might remember what a hardrive was (it didn't) and its only today I realise you guys could likely have helped me try and load drivers via comandline choices

got to this will trash windows (no really??), but leave detritus of what you had in windows old and the machine is back up and presenting you with this unfathomable and unworkable interface of gibberish called win 11

put open shell and EP back on and at least you can navigate around something that works like a computer - turned on system protection - AKA set a restore point (idiots) found her AV and Office 2019 install files and put that back on, found her outlook OST folder but where do they hid the login and set up info... if I set her up again and get a new pst / look like says ost folder these days (whatever its called) how can I merge that junk back with her old one - why wasn't it a simple as put the same junk back in the same folders and it just works... where do they hide the account set up?

how come the win10 insanity of all your secrets in user app data isn't pathetically locked down as the idiots had done for win10 ?

great, so Outlook user account info sits in the registry (what a bunch of idiots) - I guess this is no longer a part of "Windows Old" ? I guess hidden in one of these is what makes the pst file the right one or an obsolete one

Account info:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Outlook\Profiles

This key will only exist if you have certain policies enabled. Most home users will not have settings here. It's safe to use on other computers.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\office\16.0\outlook

botus said:

so went stuff it reinstall windows and it said you can't there is no harddrive or no drivers for one

Click to expand...

I believe that laptop has 11th gen CPU. For 11th gen processors the user has to load storage drivers during install. Intel refers to these as f6 Drivers can be found on HP support page for your device by entering your serial number or directly from Intel.
Unable to Detect the Drive When Installing a New Windows* OS on 11th Gen Platforms

Does the OP have a backup prior to the update?

thanks for the help and ideas everyone

no back up - I've got it running - last night put the current BIOS on it - magically been out 6 months yet the HP auto update junk it came with didn't have that on there - whilst HP's site says we recco everyone puts this on as soon as possible...

downloaded a load of "HP current drivers" (aka a good 6 months out of date and full of vulnerabilities) but they don't bother to install, they want you to use auto trash that clearly doesn't either (does anyone buy HP stuff - it seems utter junk ?)

here's how win 11 should look