Can't Get Past Log In Password

I'm trying to help my neighbor with her laptop, which won't allow her to log into Windows 7 Home Edition Premium. She has a 64-bit system running on a Toshiba Satellite C655.

She claims that she had done nothing to her computer, such as downloading anything. However, she said that she left it on all night, connected to the internet. So I'm thinking that she somehow got a virus or whatever. Don't know if that's a real danger or not, considering that she has a firewall and antivirus software installed (AVG, as I remember).

It boots up normally, but when the log-in screen appears and she enters her password, it says that the password is incorrect. She has used the same password for years, now, so it's not a matter of simply having forgotten it. It seems to have been corrupted, either on its own or via a bit of malware.

I have a Windows 7 64-bit system repair disc, but I can't get it to boot up, because I can't get past the log-in window, of course. Is there some sequence that I have to follow, in order get the System Repair Disk to show up?

When I place the repair disk in the disc drive and then boot her laptop, I can hear the disc drive whirring and clicking, but then it stop with no visible results...except that $#@& log-in screen.

Which reminds me of another question: Will a Windows System Repair Disc, 64-bit, that was made on my laptop (which is an Acer Aspire 5742Z-4097) work on her laptop? I have the same version of Windows as her laptop (Windows 7 Home Premium). She failed to make a repair/rescue disc, when she first bought her laptop.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I am trying to help her, because she is not real computer savvy, but then it's almost like the blind leading the blind, because I know only enough to get myself into trouble. Usually, I can muddle my way through problems, but this time seems to be tougher.

I have tried to boot her laptop up in safe mode, which works, but then I always come to the same roadblock: the log-in window. How can you get past it, in order to use any kind of password restoring tool, if you can't get the laptop to finish booting up in the first place?

Additionally, I have tried to use System Restore, while in safe mode, but once again, the log-in window appears and that ends the whole attempt. Catch-22.

All of the answers I've seen on-line include instructions such as, "Go to 'Start'...all of which does me no good, because I can't get to "Start," if I can't log on, so I find those instructions useless.

No, she has not entered her password incorrectly, that I can guarantee. I have helped her with several problems with her computer and it is the same password that she has used, as I stated in my original post, for years, now. That's not even a consideration. It would be comparable to you forgetting your phone number. Something else is going on, here.

I'm not sure just what you meant in your post, when you said, "for whatever it is you want to do, not sure." Didn't I explain it clearly enough? She is trying to log onto her laptop.

Also, I'm not sure what you meant by saying that using my system repair disc "should work, but this is never definite." Are there some things that it will work for, but not others, or what?

Thank you for your help.

Thanks for your reply, AddRAM; I appreciate it.

Well, like I said, I'm not all that computer savvy, myself, so I'm not really aware of just what a systems repair disc does, so you're probably right about it not being anything helpful for her in this case, anyway. I was hoping it might be something that could maybe fix corrupted log-on stuff, like passwords, but from what you said, it's not designed to do that.

What is a "1 time boot menu key?" And how do I use it?

Thanks.

Thank you, Ztrucker. I appreciate your time and effort. That tutorial is an excellent one, being so clearly laid out and helpful. Dinesh really put some effort into that tutorial, didn't he?

I was beginning to think that this forum was only for those who probably didn't really need it, anyhow, and all others being summarily, and with little effort, just advised to "take it to a repair shop," which is "somewhat" less than helpful and hardly what one expects from a forum where people come, asking for help from those in the know.

Actually, I think that I just discovered the problem, anyway, and it appears to be an easy fix...I hope. After typing in the password, I noticed that the number of dots hiding the true password characters didn't match the number of characters in the password, so I backspaced and then retyped the password slowly, watching each keystroke carefully, and sure enough, when I hit the key for the letter "r," nothing showed up. So now I'm hoping that it's just a matter of her having a piece of junk stuck beneath her "r" key.

If that's truly the case, how would I then go about posting it as being a "solved" problem? I'm asking that in case it does, in fact, solve the problem, so others might save themselves some time and trouble. I would like to be of some help in any small way, even though I'm not as able as the rest of you guys on here to help with truly technical matters.