Passwords - Lessons Learned

Last week was not particularly a good week for me - technology wise.  It began with the malware infection on Sunday and ended with me getting locked out of a new netbook.  The netbook was delivered to the house a little after 6 PM on Saturday.  I plugged in the power source and started the system to set it up.  About 5 minutes later I closed the lid of the computer to examine the different ports.  When I opened the computer up, it would not accept my password!  Can you believe it?  5 minutes.  I had not even opened the programs menu.  Word and tears would not explain my frustration.

I went to Dell suppport on another computer. After 2 chat sessions, Dell support told me that the problem was because I had used the @ symbol in my password!  In all of my many years of using a computer, I had never had a problem using the @ symbol.  Oh well....  Lesson Learned!!  Never again.  I will only use numbers and letters from now on.

I contacted my colleague who uses Windows 7 on her netbook to see if she could create a password change file for me.  Well, she did and it did not work.  That particular file has to be created on the netbook by the administrator.  It requires that the administrator enter the correct password when creating the file.

Fortunately, I have phenomenal friends who are IT garus.  J.C. & N.S. came to my rescue.  N.S. had not worked with Windows 7 Starter.  He worked through lunch - for over an hour to figure out how to change the password.  Interestingly enough, when he found the fix, Windows 7 would not allow my a change in my old password.  The work around was to create a new user, make that user the administrator, and delete the original account. BTW - I DID create a file to change my password on a flash drive.