How do I remove an old email account from my Microsoft account?

[jpk]

I stupidly activated two way account verification on my MS account. The second email account is now dead as it was hijacked a couple of years ago. I have been unable to remove it from my account. How do I correct this? MS no longer does live support and their on line solutions are not working for me. I now have a dead computer that is locked out from Windows and is now a paperweight. MS says I have to wait 30 days before I can reset my security setting. Is there a work around? Any suggestions?

 

[TKnuck]

Can you remove the hard drive and copy the files to another computer? You should then be able to reload Windows again and use a new account. I recently did this for a friend as she did not want to wait the 30 days you mentioned.

 

[jpk]

The computer is a laptop. I can remove the hard drive and load the files on my desktop. So do I then load windows off the rescue partition on the original drive? I don't know if that will work. Won't MS just see that as just a reinstall of the OS?

 

[TKnuck]

Step 1 should be to save your current files somewhere else.


Step 2 is to create a bootable Windows 10 USB drive that you can use to reload a fresh Windows 10 installation. You can go to http://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...-windows-99a58364-8c02-206f-aa6f-40c3b507420d and create a bootable USB drive. Boot your computer to that and load Windows 10. Your Windows 10 computer should be recognized as having been activated before so it should activate Windows again.