Cannot Sign In To Microsoft Account

The situation is that I upgraded from win7 to 10 and I have a basic "local administrator account". When I go to my account settings and try to click on "Sign in with a Microsoft account instead", nothing happens (there is a brief background window that flashes and then nothing happens).

Similarly, if I try to login to the xbox one app, it also says that it could not sign me in. If I click on the "sign in with a different Microsoft account", it presents me with the option to "choose an account: Microsoft account". When I click on that, again nothing happens at all.

I get the same results if I try to turn on Cortana-- when she eventually asks to connect to a Microsoft account, I click "sign in" and again nothing happens (here again I sometimes see a brief window flash in the background but I never get a login screen.

Last but not least, I get this same result if I try to add a Microsoft account to the Mail App in Win10. As soon as I try to click to add an Outlook/Hotmail account, it flashes and nothing happens. I am able to add other types of accounts to Mail (google, etc). (Oh, and if I try to login to the Microsoft Store I also get the same login problem as described).

I'm really bummed b/c I cannot use a lot of features in Windows 10 and how to hook into a Microsoft account.

Things I have tried: I run windows updates constantly just to be sure, I have rest my "clock" and time settings repeatedly, I have made sure my location settings are turned 'on'. I have tried turning all of these things off and then on, then rebooting and checking for updates...still no way to login to Microsoft account .