Windows 8.1 request to "Enter your most recent password"... Legitimate?

Question

I have a desktop computer that I keep at a location that I rarely visit anymore, but still use occasionally. It has been sitting in Standby mode (or whatever it's called on Windows 8.x), but when I "woke it up" today, I received a notification from the machine:

I've never seen anything like this before, and given that the machine has been in a hibernated state and not under my direct supervision (though in a locked room and possibly without an internet connection) for an extended period, I suppose it's possible that something could slip on the machine and create a fraudulent request for a password for a phishing scheme. A quick use of Google-fu did not yield a conclusive answer. Has anyone seen this before, and is it something I should comply with?

Solution

That's legitimate. You are logged with a Microsoft account (hotmail.com, live.com, outlook.com, etc). The password of your Microsoft account has changed since the last time you logged into this machine. Now that your machine woke up and got connected to the internet, it was notified that the password has changed, and it is asking you to enter the latest password, so other services that depend from this account are not interrupted, like Skype, Widnows settings synchronization, some Windows Store Apps, etc.

Comments

[Rik]

You can read about it here. I take it you installed it with a "Windows Live-id". Maybe Windows lost your password-setting. Did you run CCleaner? Read the complete topic (4 pages until now). There are some suggestions.

[nerdenator]

@Rik I assume it's legitimate, though? I mean, I suppose I could run CCleaner, though I haven't tried giving it the password yet. If it's a legitimate request from Windows for my password, it might be the case that the message will go away after I enter it. No need to run cleaning software if that's the case.

[Chris]

Think for a minute. A Microsoft account can also technically be an Outlook.com email account. If you login into the website and never log back out, after a while, when you come back to the site, it will promote you to re-enter your password, just to verify that you are still who the site thinks you are. More than likely that's just the state you have landed in with your Windows 8 machine, just a simple MS account re-verification. Must admit, the wording is odd, but the request is probably legit.

[nerdenator]

Password entered; notification went away. We'll take that as a solved problem for the time being.

[Rik]

Actually, running CCleaner could cause this issue if it removed some cached password-file according to the mentioned topic, not solve it. But yes, it seems a legitimate message from Windows in this case.