Signing in with a PIN no longer working for some

Sep 17, 2019 07:34 GMT  ·  By

The September 2019 cumulative update for Windows 10 is quickly becoming a huge fiasco, as at least one of the patches that Microsoft shipped this month keeps causing one issue after another.

This time, a report from AskWoody indicates that cumulative update KB4515384 breaks down the PIN login system on devices running Windows 10 version 1903, or May 2019 Update.

For now, this doesn’t appear to be a widespread problem, but a user report cited by the linked source indicates that out of 4 systems, no less than 3 encountered the bug.

At first glance, the only workaround appears to involve deleting the contents of the NGC folder, which holds all settings associated with the PIN system.

“Delete the contents of the folder C:\ Windows\ ServiceProfile\ LocalServices\ AppData\ Local\ Microsoft\ Ngc , then reboot, and your prompted for the Pin login again.  Don’t know why it’s requiring a 6 digit PIN, because I’ve never set that rule.  The files in the Ngc folder will be rebuilt when you reboot,” one user is cited as saying.

Old issue, new problems

As Woody Leonhard notes, this isn’t necessarily a new bug, albeit showing up once again in September is certainly unexpected.

Microsoft delivered a fix in its late-August cumulative update KB4512941 to repair the error breaking down the PIN system, but at this point, it’s not yet known if the two are related or this is a new problem in Windows 10 version 1903.

“Addresses an issue that may prevent the personal identification number (PIN) prompt from appearing when authenticating in Internet Explorer,” Microsoft said in the release notes of the August update.

Microsoft is yet to acknowledge the bug in this new cumulative update, so for now, we still don’t have a confirmation if this is a problem that may hit others or only an isolated report.