A friend of mine brought over his Windows 8 laptop and asked me if there is any way to get him to log into his account on the machine again. He mentioned that his kid had touched it and, unfortunately, he wasn’t able to log in ever since. When I turned on the machine and tried his password, here is what I got:
Your PC is offline. Please sign in with the last password used on this PC.
Ok, this is something new here but shouldn’t be a big deal. However, what I ended up was that I had to take quite a long route to regaining the access to the machine for my friend. The message is a little bit misleading. What really happened, in this case, was my friend’s account being disabled after his kids had tried to hack in too many times. Should I know it was the account being disabled, I would be able to solve the issue within minutes.
So, here are the steps you should do if you got the same message like this and couldn’t log in no matter what password you use.
First of all, reconnect network
The message of “offline” basically tells you that the network on your computer may be either disabled or disconnected. Since Windows 8 integrates Microsoft Account, it works best when it’s connected to the internet all the time. Check and make sure the WiFi is on, or physically plug in a network wire to ensure that the machine you are dealing with indeed is connected.
Then, try log in again. Hooray if it allows you to get in. If not, read on.
Secondly, reset your Microsoft Account password
At this moment, the chances are your account has probably disabled due to so many times of trying. If you are using Microsoft Account as your user account, go to Reset Your Microsoft Account Password web page, and follow the steps there to reset your account’s password and to re-enable the account.
Once done, you should be able to get into your Windows 8 machine again. Congratulations to you.
What if I don’t use Microsoft Account?
Well, that’s so unfortunate because if you don’t have another account that has admin privilege on the same machine, you have no other option but to hack in and reset your account’s password using one of those 3rd party Windows password resetting tools. Offline NT Password & Registry Editor is one of them that I found works quite well. Basically, what you need first is to download the tool from its website, make a bootable CD or USB, and boot from it. Then, simply follow this complete walkthrough, you should have no problem to get your own account’s password re-enabled and reset.
Once done, apply the changes, and restart the machine. You should be able to log into your machine using the new password.
To recap
The message of “Your PC is offline” tells you two things, your machine is currently offline and not connected to any network, or your account has been disabled due to some unusual activities. Don’t just judge the cause because of the word Offline. If your computer is connected online, then most likely you need to turn your attentions to your account.
Perfect. That did it. I went to the business center at the apt community I live at, pulled the network plug out of one of their boxes, put it in my laptop, logged in with my hotmail account and then logged back out and shut down. Put their network cable back into their pc, fire up my laptop and logged in with my hotmail account.
You have no idea how long it has taken me to find this one, simple answer. Thank you for providing it and I’m spreading the word, because the posts are all over the place and people are being told to wipe their drives or buy some $30 peice of software.
I also forgot my online Microsoft account password. Eventually I have unlocked my Windows 8 laptop using PCUnlocker Live CD. Now I can log back into my computer but I am still unable to sign in my hotmail account online. Thank you any way!
If one doesn’t use microsoft account on laptop, what will be the effect? I also face such issue & all the time I have to provide the password to my own PC, I want to get rid of this Microsoft account? Please tell me the steps?
can not connect my wifi, how can i deal with it?
this is the most stupid thing ever to come from Microsoft.