Why does 7 ask for a P/W when you hit F-8 while booting up?

[Tinsby]

I painted myself into a corner by using F-8 on bootup when the 'balls" are ready to form into the Windows 7 logo.

7 continually asked me for a P/W and on reboot the same thing happened over and over again. There was NO way to recover from this mistake and I had to restore a good image to make it work again.

I never had a P/W to begin with and just hitting Enter, like on XP didn't work.

A password recovery program only showed my name as a P/W and that too didn't work.

Makes me wonder why 7 stayed in that "Ask for P/W mode* after I made the mistake?

Thank you,

J T

 

[gregrocker]

Are you referring to System Recovery Options?

If password is requested just leave it blank.

Better to use the Repair function on the Win7 installer. F8 options and Repair disk ask for p/w.

 

[edwar]

Well IMHO anyone running a computer today that doesn't use a login password is just foolish. They should make all OSs require a password or you can't use it. That would stop all these type of problems.

Good luck to you and best wishes.

 

[Tinsby]

Are you referring to System Recovery Options?

If password is requested just leave it blank.

Better to use the Repair function on the Win7 installer. F8 options and Repair disk ask for p/w.

Hello,

No I wasn't trying to use the recovery options, I was merely trying to get into safe mode. I had forgotten that the Asus MB I use doesn't allow that, it wants an F-5 key to be pressed to get to SM.

Somehow using F-8 on bootup made the system stay in the "ask for P/w mode" from that time forward.
Since I had no P/W to start with I just hit Enter but of course that didn't fly. Then I made a Password Reset Disk and ran that and it gave me an error and failed.

Hard to believe that no one seems to have an answer or has encountered what I experienced.

Thanks again,

J T

 

[gregrocker]

On Asus F8 can be both the key for the BIOS Boot Menu and then when the BIOS hands over to Windows it becomes the key for Advanced Boot Options.

I have no idea why it would ask for p/w just by tapping the F8 key. I've never heard of that.. Maybe someone else has a theory. We've seen just about everything here.

 

[Layback Bear]

I have never seen such a thing unless some one has set a password in the bios to enable someone to use the bios only if they know the password.
MY Asus bios has the ability to be password protected. I don't use it.
If someone gets to my bios that means they have already killed me.

 

[edwar]

I have never seen such a thing unless some one has set a password in the bios to enable someone to use the bios only if they know the password.
MY Asus bios has the ability to be password protected. I don't use it.
If someone gets to my bios that means they have already killed me.

I couldn't of said it better.

 

[3D Jed]

Well IMHO anyone running a computer today that doesn't use a login password is just foolish.

Whenever I hear the word password, I want to reach for my gun.

I've lost count of the number of times I've had a computer in for repair where the idiot owner has written down a 16 character password on a scrap of paper for me and spelled it wrong. This leads to arguments over the phone - 'you must be typing it in wrong, works for me' etc etc.

I tell them 'if you need a password to make the other dudes in your house keep their grubby hands off your property, the answer is to sort your friends out - not to waste my time with stupid password guessing'.

There's also folk who read an article about strong passwords. They change their password to something like ()&%$£KjUt1M4m7iY, write it down wrong and ask me to break their new strong password. Surely if it can be broken, its no use?

Although I know how to defeat passwords, I now tell customers 'if its got a password, its going straight in the skip'. Working so far . . .

(UK skip = US dumpster)

 

[gregrocker]

I've never used a password. I also won't work on a PC that has one.

These are calculations that an owner makes that aren't really known to us, but certainly don't apply to others.

 

[Layback Bear]

Tell the password people that their password has worked. It keeps me out so I can't help you with your problem. Let me know when you get rid of the password or change it to dumbass so we both can remember it.

 

[3D Jed]

I don't think regular computer users realize how times you reboot a machine when repairing it. Add in typos due to my tired old eyesight, multiply that by the number of repairs and you get password nightmares.

Apologies for hijacking the thread with my rant.

 

[edwar]

I don't think regular computer users realize how times you reboot a machine when repairing it. Add in typos due to my tired old eyesight, multiply that by the number of repairs and you get password nightmares.

Apologies for hijacking the thread with my rant.

Then maybe you should look for another line of work or retire. You clearly aren't cut out for working on computers in the world as it is today.

 

[Tinsby]

I have no idea why it would ask for p/w just by tapping the F8 key. I've never heard of that.. Maybe someone else has a theory. We've seen just about everything here.

Hi Gregrocker,

Well no one else does either. I have never used a P/w on any version of Windows, likewise there is no BIOS p/w on my machine. The message asking for the mysterious word was definitely coming from the OS.

Again I was tapping F-8 WHILE windows had already started to boot up. In other words I was starting to see the Win 7 logo on the screen whilst I was doing it. I know that's too late to be hitting that key, but the dual boot makes 7 start up so fast it was all I could try.

Even the Linux p/w finder showed NO PASSWORD in place. Btw the program I was using to find the missing word is called "NT Offline Password Changer" it came up with nothing but my user name and no other words were found.

Still a mystery to everyone including me. In any event it's fine now and I guess we'll chalk it up to Sod's Law!

Thanks for replying!

J T