Wondering if any of you guys might have some advice; I'm trying to help fix my mom's computer over the phone, and looking for ideas.
Context: my mom bought a laptop second-hand. The laptop is running Windows 7, and only had one (admin) user. The previous owner had the laptop set up so that you had to scan a fingerprint at the lock screen to log in. As my mom could never do that, her only option at the lock screen was to select 'user - locked', which would allow her to log in to a temporary (also admin) profile. As a result, any documents or settings saved, etc., would disappear each time she turned the computer off, as a new profile was generated each time.
To solve this problem, we created a new admin account for her, while logged in to one of those temporary profiles. I thought this would solve the problem. However, when she logged in and tried to use the internet on Chrome, she was met with this error: "Your connection is not private" (specifically, NET::ERR_CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID). We tried Chrome, Edge, Firefox - all browsers result in similar privacy/certificate errors for all HTTPS sites. There is no 'proceed' option when this occurs in any of the browsers; she is completely blocked. HTTP sites work FINE; she can visit http://example.com, for example. This error does NOT occur in the temporary profile.
I have tried the following: (1) re-synching the clock (2) installing all pending Windows udpates (3) disabling any anti-virus and firewall (4) clearing all browser history and cache (There wasn't any on the new profile anyway) (5) ran sfc /scannow as admin from that profile; no issues. (6) Went through and check for any recently installed programs that could be causing issues; there were none. (7) Checked internet connection; fine. Nothing has worked... I am stumped.
Could this be some sort of permissions issue, where the SSL certificates aren't accessible by the new admin user, because of the fact that the user was created from within a temporary profile? If so, is there any way to fix this? It seems SSL certificates are stored in a variety of locations, so it's not like there's a particular folder I can go to and check the permissions on.
P.S. I know the recommended solution would likely be 'wipe the computer and re-install Windows 7' or 'upgrade to Windows 10', both of which are great solutions, but they really aren't options right now as I'm stepping her through all of this over the phone. I plan to upgrade to Windows 10 when I see her in person, but that will be a while, so I'm trying to fix the existing problem for now.
