After my account and computer was removed from Intune policies and the account was removed from Windows Settings > Accounts > Access work or school, I wanted to revert to a simple 4-digit password but could not revert to a simple pin code.
You'd think that would be enough, right? It's not. It's not enough to remove the computer from Intune and remove the work account from the computer. I tried all the usual methods of changing pin complexity. I tried setting the password requirements using GPO. Nothing I tried worked.
So I ignored it… until a dialog came up telling me the pin expired. I didn't want to make a new pin every 6 months and put more effort into getting rid of the policy that set the pin complexity.
I finally found the solution: edit a registry key.
- Open Registry Editor – you can do this by typing regedit and the start menu and opening it.
- Browse to this key:
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\PolicyManager\current\device\DeviceLock
- Modify the value MinDevicePasswordLength – this sets the password length and was set to 8; I changed to 4
- Modify the value MinDevicePasswordComplexCharacters – this controls how many different character groups you need (upper case, lower case, number, special) and was on 4, I changed it to 1
- Reboot.
Problem solved. I could now create a 4-digit pin code.