I upgraded to Windows 8.1 a few weeks back, and I didn’t really have an issue with it till I had to log in to my computer.

The password I had been using failed, and I don’t remember ever changing it.

I thought it was odd that the lock screen was displaying my Outlook.com e-mail address, so I tried that password instead. It worked.

God damn.

I would prefer not to tie those credentials together, and when I attempted to create a local account with the same user name I had used before, I was greeted with the helpful error message, “That name is already taken”.

During the update process, the installer forces you to create or log in to your Microsoft account. When I realized my mistake with my desktop update, I hoped to avoid the same fate with my laptop. The installer provides no such option.

As a result, my login became tied to my Microsoft account, thus forcing me to use my online credentials locally. I didn’t want to relinquish the use of my full name to my Microsoft account.

So on the advice of an article that I can no longer find (otherwise I would link to it), I logged into my Microsoft account and went to the settings where I temporarily changed my display name. Then I went back into Windows 8.1 and created a local account using my full name. Once it was created, I changed the display name of my Microsoft account back to my real name.

I was concerned that creating a local account would mean creating a duplicate of my User folder, but that didn’t happen. All my settings remained. I just had to trick my Microsoft account for a bit to reclaim my login name for my local account.

Till then, I hadn’t minded the update, and in fact, I found some of the UI tweaks nice. Of course, Microsoft had to ruin the mood with its strong-arm tactics.