We have all heard that the definition of insanity is: doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. This was not lost on me when recently my password on my home PC was no longer accepted.
Imagine logging in to your own PC, that no one else touches, and the password no longer works.
I cannot tell you how many times that I tried the password that I know that it is supposed to be, and then doubting my sanity, trying every other password that it might be “just in case I changed it” without remembering I did.
The only reason there was a smidgeon of a doubt is that recently Yahoo forced me to change my password. They would accept nothing less than a strong password which by the way is so strong that I have trouble typing it while looking at it, and there is not a chance of remembering it.
No longer are the days of the family pet or address or birthday acceptable as passwords. Imagine having to type a password like this T4^s#hg^9? every time you logged on to your computer!
While the home PC’s password was not quite this strong, there is more than room for error. This led to a rather frustrating afternoon as one might guess.
The trouble shooting process was difficult as Windows allows little room for error and certainly not much for diagnostics. My first guess was the keyboard had to be messing up in some way so I changed the batteries. When that did not bear fruit I hooked up a hard wired keyboard to the USB port and still nothing. “Incorrect login name or password.”
Google produced nothing relevant other than an ad for some company that sells some software to recover your password. Microsoft was no help. If I were in a decision making role at Microsoft I would make some sort of option on the login screen that would allow for one to make certain that their keyboard is typing the correct letter and that the caps is on or off. Wireless keyboards don’t have any LED on them to tell you about “num lock” or shift lock and , the screen was not giving me any hint of this either although it normally would.
Windows 7 offers a way to reset the password, but you have to plan for it first and oh yes, it requires the “A drive, a floppy.” This too needs to be re-thought as few computers today have a floppy drive.
Somewhere in the process of trying to boot into safe mode I get an error that says “keyboard failure.”
At this point I try the wired keyboard into several different USB ports with the same results. I then installed a usb card thinking that maybe that would work, nope same results.
I could do things in Bios but not in Windows. The thing that would have helped is a way to check the keyboard, in Bios. My guess is that Bios is not as picky about what it sees from the keyboard and since you are only using limited keyboard functions, curser movements, enter and tab, one would not have guessed that the USB was having issues.
I just happen to own another machine of identical configuration, so a swap of the hardrive to the other machine rendered a machine that worked with my password that worked all along.
I can only conclude that there is an issue with the USB controller on the motherboard.
I am considering clearing out the Bios on the old board and trying a re-install of the software just to see if that fixes it. There may also be some sort of update from Dell for that Bios.
For you hardware junkies out there, this is probably standard fare. While I could have purchased a new machine for the $$ wasted in time to diagnose this, I have a new found empathy towards those who just use the machine and have no clue how it works.
Can you imagine Joe Q User out there that really looks for the “any key” having an issue like this?
If I was frustrated (and I have been at this when DOS 1 was new,) I cannot even fathom what something like this would be like for others who have less experience than I.
I hope that this helps someone somewhere possibly saving some time and frustration as this type of bugaboo should not happen.
Best to you and those that you care about!
TheTimeDok 