Some Sage Advice, My Friends

[MineralMan]

If you have very recently changed your Microsoft account password, but haven't had reason to use that new password often enough to remember it clearly, please, for the love of Pasta, do not install a Windows update without making sure you know that password.

Take the word of one who made that mistake. I blithely allowed Windows to update itself this morning, only to realize after the PC had restarted, that I had changed my Microsoft account password yesterday due to a security concern, and had not made a physical note with the new password on it. In my dotage, I could not remember which weird variation of my typical password I had used.

Much ado was caused in resetting the forgotten password, involving my wife's computer, a couple of cell phones, and considerable time wasted.

So, to reiterate: If you change your Microsoft account password and use Windows 10, do, please, write it down and put it in a safe place at once. Do not do as I have done, or you will have regrets, I promise.

[Phoenix61]

1. I locked myself out of a Yahoo

e-mail account doing the same thing.

[MineralMan]

2. Yes. I also changed that password at the same time.

Fortunately, I keep a record of my many passwords in a cryptically-named file on my hard drive and have copies of that file stored elsewhere. I did update that file when I changed passwords yesterday. However, I neglected to copy it off the hard drive or print it out yesterday when I made the changes, so the only place I had the information stored was on the PC's hard drive, which, of course, I couldn't access, due to the Windows update and being unable to log back into my PC.

More proof that I am a doddering old fool, I suppose. Worst of all, I interrupted my wife, who is watching a movie on the TV, since I had to log into her PC to do the password reset. With luck, she will forgive me after opening her Christmas gift.

Sometimes, I long for the days of MS-DOS and a simpler file structure. Yes, I do.

[wishstar]

3. Do external backups too, in case an update wipes out pictures or other important files

After way too many years of ignoring warnings and thinking I never needing backup, I finally got a MacBook passport last year and plugged it in to backup my downloads and years of nature pics I had collected from my own backyard- capturing heavy snowfalls, fox, bears, turkeys, butterflies etc that I liked to share as slideshow.

I finally updated to High Sierra OS last week, and it not only knocked me off my email which I had to call provider to reset, but it removed all of my picture library and ability to access any pictures. But the backup device worked like a charm to put the photo library back in place. I had some nervous moments though until the backup worked.

[MineralMan]

4. Yeah. I have such complete data backups, but update them only occasionally.

I have several 32 gb thumb drives that hold those backups. On a regular basis, I tend to back up important current work files frequently, but only do total data dumps from my hard drive once a month or so. The recent stuff is available on my normal backups.

The problem this time was that I changed a couple of passwords. I did store the changes, but not externally. My mistake. I have corrected that mistake now, and won't make that one again when I change a password. It was just a lapse. As soon as I triggered the Windows update to start, I remembered the password changes, and did a facepalm on myself.

Really, it only took a few minutes to do the reset with Microsoft, but it was far more annoying than it should have been, really.