Tuesday, October 08, 2013

Removing the Required PIN code on Windows Surface

My corporate E-Mail requires that any device I sync it to, enable a 4-digit PIN to unlock the device, at a minimum.  I can make this as complex as I like, but I must at least have a 4-digit PIN.  I'm fine with this, I think it's a good practice to have a PIN on your phone or tablet, so if it's lost, the thief or casual finder can't access all the data on it.  Even more so all those corporate secrets that I have! (har har! Like I'm trusted with corporate secrets!)

What I'm not fine with, is once you decide that you no longer want your work account on a device, you can't get rid of the requirement for the PIN, like how I'm re-purposing an old SurfaceRT (yes, I pre-ordered a Surface2!) to be a digital music player / weather station / morning news station / upstairs Skype phone, in the bedroom, I don't have *anything* on it that would need a PIN, and the likely hood of the tablet leaving the bedroom aside from when I move houses, is extremely small.

Searching around turned up nothing, asking around (especially @Microsoft) usually turns up something.  And this time it turned up this super handy How do I Turn Off the AutoLock in Windows 8 article.  And here I was searching around in gpedit.msc or regedit, and it's right there in the Control Panel UI!

Here's how to do it:
  • Open up the Control Panel (either Win+X or Win+R then type "Control", enter)
  • Click on the title User Accounts and Family Safety
  • Click on the title User Accounts
  • Click on the Reset Security Policy 
  • Click on the Reset Policies Button 
That's all there is to it. Now you can go into PC Settings and set the password policy to never required!  This also allows you to change the default screensaver time out as well.

There you have it.  It took me a lot of effort to find that, so I'm sharing it here (so I don't forget as well).  And now I don't have to factory reset my SurfaceRT! w00t!

8 comments:

Business Registration Services said...

Hi Sean,

This is a great find! Im not that techy person and im having hard time to figure this out. Thanks this was really helpful.

~ Ledz

Janice said...

Thanks for that Sean!

Been looking for a way to do this, much appreciated.

Anonymous said...

Does not work on Surface R/T.

Michael said...

This is a nice post.We are impressed by your clear description of your topics. thanks

Mickel son said...

I admire the valuable information you offer in all your articles. We are impressed by your clear description of your topic. Thanks for the information.

Eliot said...

Great! Thanks for sharing the information. That is very helpful for increasing my knowledge in this field.

Tom Bradly said...

This is good to know! I encountered this several times in the past and always needed to bring to the technician.

Jaxon Oakley said...

Nice one.