Windows 7 user login fails even with correct password

Question

Booted up my Windows 7 partition today and attempted to login per usual. Denied access due to incorrect password failure, despite having entered the password I have been using for the past three months. Made sure caps lock was off, made sure to type slowly, etc. Nothing.

Rebooted into safe-mode and made another attempt. Made sure to type very slowly again as a sanity check - still no access. Typed it in several more times, a longer hang while the "Welcome" proxy was attempting to login, and yet again denied access. Then, inexplicably, re-entered the exact same password for the nth time and voila! I am now able to login.

Has anyone experienced this?

Answer 1

Yes - my problem was that there was an incorrect keyboard layout on my logon screen, and another was the numlock key was on, turning some of my letters into numbers.

Answer 2

Try changing your language. It just took me 20 minutes to discover that my password was not working because I had another language on. I was about to reinstall Windows but then I realised this.

Answer 3

After enabling the NumLock feature, you can't type normal anymore. For example, when you type in hey, how's it going, your computer would type 123456… etc..

Find NumLock and press it to reverse things and set it back to normal. On my Dell it's Fn+F4, on Compaq it's Fn+ScreenLock. It's different on every make and model. Based on your keyboard you can get original settings of your keyboard in following ways.

• Fn+F11
• Shift+NumLock
• Fn+NumLock
• Fn+F11+ScrollLock
• Fn+F8 (on HP laptop)
• Ctrl+F11
• Fn+Shift+NumLock

Another workaround is boot your computer to PCUnlocker Live CD and it enables you to remove the password. After logging into Windows, try to type some characters with notepad and you'll find some strange problems.