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:
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!
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
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!
