system randomly started asking for a password

[Matt]

I was working on my laptop... powered down to grab a biet to eat.. and when
I started up the system it asked me for a password. I have never entered a
password on my account at all. In fact I did a complete reinstall of the OS
about 6 months ago and everything has been working fine. I doubt it's a
virus because I rarely open any unknown files in email and I'm running
norton with the latest updates and I ran a full scan on Sunday. Any ideas?

--

 

[mike]

I was working on my laptop... powered down to grab a biet to eat.. and when
I started up the system it asked me for a password. I have never entered a
password on my account at all. In fact I did a complete reinstall of the OS
about 6 months ago and everything has been working fine. I doubt it's a
virus because I rarely open any unknown files in email and I'm running
norton with the latest updates and I ran a full scan on Sunday. Any ideas?

Did you really mean randomly? Or did it start asking deterministically?
Was the computer in your possession at all times?
I once took a computer to a swapmeet. Some nice person put a password
on it and ruined my day. Fortunately it was old enough to be
resettable. You may not be so lucky.
mike

 

[Matt]

Did you really mean randomly? Or did it start asking deterministically?
Was the computer in your possession at all times?
I once took a computer to a swapmeet. Some nice person put a password on
it and ruined my day. Fortunately it was old enough to be resettable. You
may not be so lucky.
mike

Sorry... What I meant to say was that I was using the computer at my house
(all alone), turned it off to cook and eat diner and then when I powered it
back up it started asking for a password on an account that never had a
password in the first place. I also booted in safe mode and it asked for a
password for the administrator account which also never had one in the first
place. I tried the password hack mentioned in the previous thread
http://www.digitaldrake.com/passwordrec.htm and it showed that the
administrator account did not have a password at all even though windows
thinks that it does. I still tried using the software to reset the
administrator account to a password I know but then when I try to log in
using that password it is rejected.