Problem with “New User” being the only account on the sign-in screen after reboot

This is one of the most mysterious problems I’ve encountered! Anyone who can provide input is more than welcome to ping me on Twitter or Teams, or help by entering some basic information in this form.

UPDATE July 5, 2022: Added this form to gather and hopefully be able to get to the root cause. Also, I’ve gotten indications on a potential causes leading to the New user state, more below.

UPDATE July 6, 2022: A response from Microsoft leads to the root cause being Web sign-in being enabled, which is in preview (and has been for quite a few years) and is also unsupported. Still does not explain the extreme intermittent occurrence of the problem but at least a great indicator and something to validate.

Problem

You restart your Windows 10 or Windows 11 device (Azure AD Joined + MEM/Intune enrolled) and after the restart, instead of displaying the last logged on user, the only account on the sign-in screen is an account named “New User”.

This happens extremely rarely, but I’ve seen it a few times. The “New User” comes from nowhere and if you click Switch user it just returns to the same view as below.

I have seen the problem a few times for multiple Windows 10 versions back to at least Windows 10 v1909, and on multiple devices from multiple vendors. Unfortunately I’ve seen it once on a Windows 11 device as well. The other day this problem hit a colleague of mine as well so it’s not just me :) .

Cause

I’ve gotten reports (thanks to the community):

• A response from Microsoft leads to the root cause being Web sign-in being enabled, which is in preview (and has been for quite a few years) and is also unsupported. This is also true for the environments where I have seen this problem occur so this is the most likely cause of the “New user” phenomena!

There are also some indications around Windows Hello for Business and network/internet connection:

• After the users have had multiple bad authentication attempts using Windows Hello for Business, bad PIN, face or fingerprint recognition, and then initiating a restart.
• When there is no available network/internet connection when shutdown / restart is performed.

Workaround

Two potential workarounds, which are are far 100% reliable:

1. Do a Shutdown of the computer. This is often the most successful and quickest recovery.
2. Restarting multiple times will eventually get you to a point where you can click Switch user and it will give you “Other user” where you can manually enter the UPN of your regular user account together with password, which is the only way of getting in. After that everything works as it usually does!

Thoughts and ideas

I have no idea where to start. A local user account with display name “New User” and username “defaultuser100000” do exist in the affected Windows 10 devices.

Why does it approximately one time out of 100 or even 1000 “lose” the last user and offer no options to login as you typically do, only displaying “New User”? Is it a localization issue? Intermittent problem and very rare to say the least.

Once again, if you have any input you are more than welcome to ping me on Twitter or Teams, or fill out this form!