Hi. I am trying to help my neighbor with her laptop (Satellite C655) which is running Windows 7 Home Premium Edition, 64-bit OS.
She brought it to me, complaining that she couldn't log in, so I tried it and discovered that some of her keys weren't functioning. Of course, one of them (there were ten that weren't working) just happened to be a letter that is in her log-on password. So, I jumped to the conclusion that she simply had a bad keyboard, and after taking it out and blowing it out with compressed air, as well as cleaning the ribbon cable contacts with an eraser, it still did the same thing. Next, I just ordered a new keyboard. It came today and I installed it with high hopes, but was disappointed to see the same exact problem. Puzzling.
Then, after doing a lot of researching online, I discovered that I could use the "Easy Access" option, seen down in the lower left corner, to turn on the virtual keyboard, and was then able to effectively bypass her keyboard, typed in her password successfully and got the computer to log in and boot up all the way. Although it was kind of a "work-around," and not really addressing the original problem, it worked and I was encouraged to have gotten at least that far.
But now I had to try to find the real problem.
I thought that maybe there was something wrong with her whole password function, and it would be better for her to just not use a password, since her laptop is her own, everybody else in the family has their own computer, and she never takes it out of the house. So I went to "Control Panel," then "User Accounts," then clicked on "Remove Your Password," then shut the computer down again.
At this point, unfortunately, I can't remember the exact sequence of steps (misteps?) that I took which got me into hot water, but, as I remember, it still wasn't booting up normally, and I kept having to use the virtual keyboard to log in. And, besides, those ten keys were still not working, so obviously something was still amiss.
After doing more searching on the internet, I read where others who could not get some of their keys to respond, finally got them to work again by unplugging their laptops, removing the battery, then holding the power button down for 60 seconds. So I tried that...and it worked.
Now I had all of the keys responding like they should, but I also had a new, serious problem: I couldn't log in. In fact, I now can't do much of anything, since I'm presented with a blue, rectangular box in the middle of the screen that asks for my password. I have tried all kinds of passwords, such as her old password, "password," "admin," "administrator," etc., all to no avail.
This all-black screen with a blue log-in box in the middle looks different than Windows normal, log-in screen, so I don't know what it really is. When I turn the laptop on, it starts to boot up and shows the Toshiba logo, as well as a thin bar at the bottom of the screen, with the options of pressing F2 and F12, but neither of those do anything, and I am simply faced again with the blue log-in box. After trying about four or five times, the laptop then just shuts itself off, assuming that I'm a hacker, I guess.
I have tried putting in a Windows 7 repair disc, then turn on the computer, but only get the same result, the blue log-in window.
Does anyone have any idea of what might have happened? How can I at least get back to the log-in screen where I can use the virtual keyboard? And why did the blue box, saying "Current Password" all of a sudden appear, when it never showed, before?
She brought it to me, complaining that she couldn't log in, so I tried it and discovered that some of her keys weren't functioning. Of course, one of them (there were ten that weren't working) just happened to be a letter that is in her log-on password. So, I jumped to the conclusion that she simply had a bad keyboard, and after taking it out and blowing it out with compressed air, as well as cleaning the ribbon cable contacts with an eraser, it still did the same thing. Next, I just ordered a new keyboard. It came today and I installed it with high hopes, but was disappointed to see the same exact problem. Puzzling.
Then, after doing a lot of researching online, I discovered that I could use the "Easy Access" option, seen down in the lower left corner, to turn on the virtual keyboard, and was then able to effectively bypass her keyboard, typed in her password successfully and got the computer to log in and boot up all the way. Although it was kind of a "work-around," and not really addressing the original problem, it worked and I was encouraged to have gotten at least that far.
But now I had to try to find the real problem.
I thought that maybe there was something wrong with her whole password function, and it would be better for her to just not use a password, since her laptop is her own, everybody else in the family has their own computer, and she never takes it out of the house. So I went to "Control Panel," then "User Accounts," then clicked on "Remove Your Password," then shut the computer down again.
At this point, unfortunately, I can't remember the exact sequence of steps (misteps?) that I took which got me into hot water, but, as I remember, it still wasn't booting up normally, and I kept having to use the virtual keyboard to log in. And, besides, those ten keys were still not working, so obviously something was still amiss.
After doing more searching on the internet, I read where others who could not get some of their keys to respond, finally got them to work again by unplugging their laptops, removing the battery, then holding the power button down for 60 seconds. So I tried that...and it worked.
Now I had all of the keys responding like they should, but I also had a new, serious problem: I couldn't log in. In fact, I now can't do much of anything, since I'm presented with a blue, rectangular box in the middle of the screen that asks for my password. I have tried all kinds of passwords, such as her old password, "password," "admin," "administrator," etc., all to no avail.
This all-black screen with a blue log-in box in the middle looks different than Windows normal, log-in screen, so I don't know what it really is. When I turn the laptop on, it starts to boot up and shows the Toshiba logo, as well as a thin bar at the bottom of the screen, with the options of pressing F2 and F12, but neither of those do anything, and I am simply faced again with the blue log-in box. After trying about four or five times, the laptop then just shuts itself off, assuming that I'm a hacker, I guess.
I have tried putting in a Windows 7 repair disc, then turn on the computer, but only get the same result, the blue log-in window.
Does anyone have any idea of what might have happened? How can I at least get back to the log-in screen where I can use the virtual keyboard? And why did the blue box, saying "Current Password" all of a sudden appear, when it never showed, before?