Tuesday, April 7, 2015

The user name or password is incorrect

A week ago, I tried to login to my computer without success. The error message was "The user name or password is incorrect." I was pretty sure that I didn't change my password, even the password hint displayed was still the same. Was I being hacked?

I did install a free file cleaner software not long ago, did that software somehow screw up the system in some mysterious way? I tried to dig up info on the Internet about how to fix this user name and password login problem, there are numerous resources showing how one can remove the login requirement, edit registry, or use a tool called netplwiz for managing user accounts, blah blah blah... After a few times of trying to get into repair mode, the computer was managed to restore itself to an earlier restore point, things seemed to be working once again. I immediately did a scan on the computer, nothing malicious showed up.

A day ago, the same login problem showed up. I began to wonder if that was really a software problem, maybe it was a hardware one. So I ran to Walmart and bought a cheap keyboard, plugged it in, voila, it works again and I can sign in with my usual password. I removed the new keyboard, plugged in the old one, same old bad error message "The user name or password is incorrect" reappeared. I almost put the blame on that software and planned to send a complain email to the software author, LOL.