As if Windows Security wasn't confusing enough, in Windows 8 we get thrown yet another curve ball with Windows Live accounts to logon.

When I set up my Windows 8 machine I originally set it up with a 'real', non-live account that I always use on my Windows machines. I did this mainly so I have a matching account for resources around my home and intranet network so I could log on to network resources properly. At some point later I decided to set up Windows Live security just to see how changes things.

Windows wants you to use Windows Live

Windows 8 logins are required in order for the Windows RT account info to work. Not that I care - since installing Windows 8 I've maybe spent 10 minutes with Windows RT because - well it's pretty freaking sucky on the desktop. From shitty apps to mis-managed screen real estate I can't say that there's anything compelling there to date, but then I haven't looked that hard either.

Anyway… I set up the Windows Live account to see if that changes things. It does - I do get all my live logins to work from Live Account so that Twitter and Facebook posts and pictures and calendars all show up on live tiles on the start screen and in the actual apps. That's nice-ish, but hardly that exciting given that all of the apps tied to those live tiles are average at best. And it would have been nice if all of this could be done without being forced into running with a Windows Live User Account - this all feels like strong-arming you into moving into Microsofts walled garden… and that's probably what it's meant to do.

Who am I?

The real problem to me though is that these Windows Live and raw Windows User accounts are a bit unpredictable especially when it comes to developer information about the account and which credentials to use.

So for example Windows reports folder security like this:

Notice it's showing my Windows Live account. Now if I go to Edit and try to add my Windows user account (rstrahl) it'll just automatically show up as the live account.

On the other hand though the underlying system sees everything as my real Windows account. After I switched to a Windows Live login account and I have to login to Windows with my Live account, what do you suppose this returns?

Console.WriteLine(Environment.UserName);

It returns my raw Windows user account (rstrahl). All my permissions, all my actual settings and the desktop console altogether run under that account. If I look in TaskManager (or Process Explorer for me) I see:

Everything running on the desktop shell with my login running under my Windows user account.

Here's another fun one: Mapping network drives between two Windows 8 machines. When I map a remote drive I have to specify the Windows (non-live ie. rstrahl) account name in the dialog, but type in my Windows Live password. Right Very intuitive!

Schizophrenia abounds with this system. I suppose it makes sense in some twisted sort of way, but how is an average non-technical user going to figure out these inconsistencies?  Heck even if I am technical it's unclear to me where this association is happening? When I switched to a Windows Live account, nowhere did I associate my real account with the Live account - it just happened. And looking through the account configuration dialogs I can't find any reference to the raw Windows account. Other than switching back I see no mention anywhere of the raw Windows account - everything refers to the Live account.

Right then, clear as potato soup!

So this is who you really are!

The problem is that in some situations this schizophrenic account behavior gets a bit weird. Today I was running a local Web application in IIS that uses Windows Authentication - I tried to log-in with my real Windows account login because that's what I'm used to using with WINDOWS freaking Authentication through IIS. But… it failed. I checked my IIS settings, my apps login settings and I just could not for the life of me get into the site with my Windows username.

That is until I finally realized that I should try using my Windows Live credentials instead. And that worked. So now in this Windows Authentication dialog I had to type in my Live ID and password, which is - just weird. Then in IIS if I look at a Trace page (or in my case my app's Status page) I see that the logged on account is - my Windows user account.

What's really annoying about this is that in some places it uses the live account in other places it uses my Windows account. If I remote desktop into my Web server online - I have to use the local authentication dialog but I have to put in my real Windows credentials not the Live account.

Oh yes, it's all so terribly intuitive and logical…

So in summary, when you log on with a Live account you are actually mapped to an underlying Windows user. In any application if you check the user name it'll be the underlying user account (not sure what happens in a Windows RT app or even what mechanism is used there to get the user name info).  When logging on to local machine resource with user name and password you have to use your Live IDs even if the permissions on the resources are mapped to your underlying Windows account.

Easy enough I suppose, but still not exactly intuitive behavior…