Saved Passwords

Ron Eggers

SPFG, Supreme Picture Framing God
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Some idiot, most likely me, typed in the wrong password in the sign-in dialog for my ISP and checked the 'save password' box.

I have tried saving the correct password, but the incorrect one appears each time the dialog appears.

This is on my newly-revitalized XP notebook and, normally, I'm the only one that uses it, so I like to save the passwords on my low-security functions like internet sign-ins and TG.

How do I get rid of the incorrect password so I can save the correct one? I have already tried doing that in the internet options settings, but that didn't fly.
 
Ron, I have XP on my machine...everything was going fine until a coupla years ago, when I changed by email addy, because I was getting so much spam I couldn't filter it out.
Changing email was a piece of cake...all I had to do was add another user on the XP screen for MSN Explorer. But, because nobody was using this computer, I re-used the same password.
The only way I know to change passwords, big-time, is to call your ISP and ask for a password reset. MSN has their ISP connestions so screwed up, they even have a seperate '800' number just for password resets.
I don't know who your ISP is, but that's where I'd start. Some of these guys may know an easier way, but I've just had to learn to live with it.
A friend of mine told me that XP was a great OS, having been derived from the old NT, but that it was w-a-y too intuitive, and 'learns' what you like to do, where you like to go, etc, and doesn't like it when you change things...

Good luck! I'd try the password reset with your ISP.
 
Start, Control Panel, Network Connections. From that point you have more options but not sure what you should do, but you can probably figure it out.
 
You'd think that would work, wouldn't you?

I can go into my network/dial-up settings and change the password back to the real one, but the next time I dial-up, the saved password is the bogus one. The **** of it is, I can't even tell what the bogus password actually is, since it looks like this: ***************. I may take Charles' advice and notify my ISP that I'd like my new password to be ***************.

This is not a major problem. It just means I have to manually type in my password each time I log onto my dial-up. I only do that 30-40 times/day.

XP appears to be very quick to learn and very slow to forget. Still, I love it and recommend it to anyone considering the switch.
 
Try this:

Before you dial, UNCHECK the "save/remember password: box.

Type in your password and complete a login. Then log off.

Go back again, put in the new PW, and turn the remember button back on.

Log on with it like this once, and hopefully it'll be out with the old and in with the new for good...

Mike
 
Ron,

Did you try going to your control panel and, under "Phone and Modem Connections", remove your dialup and then add it back in with the correct password.

Most ISP's have a homepage that you can go to and, on that homepage, you will have something like "My Homepage" where you may be able to change your login name, password, address, etc. Sometimes you can go directly to that personal homepage by typing in www.loginwww.loginname.ISPserver.com/net/whatever.

If all else fails, do what Chuckie suggested and phone your ISP and talk to one of the tech reps. there and they can change your password back to whatever you want it to be.

Framerguy

P.S. Please email me the address of that Cracker Barrel so I can make things right for you on that poor service that you got on your trip. I don't cotton to poor service at ANY CB and heads WILL roll for this treatment of one of my travelling buddies!!
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Mike, I tried your suggestion last night - then again this morning when I was rested. Nope. Didn't work.

FramerGuy, I don't want to actually change my password. I just want my Windows internet dialer to remember the real one.

Cracker Barrel Store #211 in San Antonio was the one that messed up our timetable. We were seated immediately, then waited about 50 minutes for a couple of burgers. On top of THAT, they neglected to bring my son's cole slaw, though they were very decent about removing it from our bill.

When we stopped at Cracker Barrel #266* in DeSoto, TX (5 hours later) the service was MUCH better - perhaps because we bought nothing but some retro junk food and a couple of postcards.

Cracker Barrels may be closing up in Wisconsin, but they appear to be thriving everywhere else.

Oh, yeah - the password. When I use the ISP's dialer to log on, it remembers the correct password - then logs on to its own home page, regardless of what homepage I have set.

So I use the Windows dialer, instead, which appears to be trying to log on with my Hotmail Passport password.

*This doesn't mean we actually went to 266 Cracker Barrels in three days. That only happens when I'm travelling with FramerGuy.
 
Lance, that's an excellent idea and I can't imagine why it didn't work.

I uninstalled the dialer with the errant password, removed it from my list of network connections, then re-installed it with the correct password. The bogus password appeared the very next time I used the Windows dialer.

I don't know where this password is coming from, but I'm stuck with it.

Another example of XP's stubbornness: Windows Media Player is the default DVD player, but it doesn't play DVDs 'cause it doesn't come with a decoder. There are no settings in Media Player to prevent it from opening when a DVD is inserted in the drive and all attempts to change the file associations failed.

I decided to uninstall Media Player, make the real DVD the default player, then re-install Media Player (which is on a separate XP installation CD.)

XP would not let me uninstall Media Player. It's "protected." I went into Windows and changed wmplayer.exe to wmplayer.bak. As soon as I inserted a DVD, Media Player opened. Sure enough, XP had recreated Media Player for me.

I repeated this process several times before I finally deleted every instance of wmplayer.* and emptied the recycle bin. That finally got rid of the beast. On re-installing it, I had the option to NOT make it the default DVD player.

I have NEVER watched a DVD movie on my notebook, and I don't ever expect to, but now I can.
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Ron,

Call your ISP provider and have them change your password back to the one you used before. They will check it out for you and tell you if it is working properly.

I also had the same problem with XP and the DVD player. I only rented 1 DVD movie since I bought this new computer so I just took it home and played it on my home DVD player.

(I don't like to be interupted by customers at work when I get into a good flick, anyway!)
shutup.gif


Good luck with getting your old password back online.

Framerguy
 
http://search.microsoft.com/search/results.aspx?st=b&View=en-us&na=82&qu=xp+passwords


Ron

Not sure if this my be of use

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;318026
Passwords Are Unexpectedly Assigned to User Accounts After You Upgrade to Windows XP
Applies To
This article was previously published under Q318026
SYMPTOMS
When you upgrade or install Microsoft Windows XP, passwords may be assigned to user accounts that previously had no password or you did not assign passwords to any user accounts during the installation process. As a result, you cannot log on to the computer.
CAUSE
This behavior occurs if Windows XP Setup does not complete properly. Setup assigns temporary passwords to user accounts during the upgrade process, and is supposed to remove the passwords when Setup is complete. The temporary passwords are written to the Setupact.log file that is located in the folder in which Windows is installed.
RESOLUTION
To resolve this behavior, retrieve the password from the Setupact.log file, and then use the password to log on to the computer. You must search the Setupact.log file for the following line, where Username is the name of the user account and xxxxxxxxxxxxx is the password for that account:
Random password for Username is xxxxxxxxxxxxx
To do this, use one of the following methods, as appropriate to your situation.
Windows XP Is Installed on a FAT32 Partition
To retrieve the password from the Setupact.log file if Windows XP is installed on a FAT32 partition, follow these steps:
1. Insert a Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition (Me) startup disk or a Microsoft Windows 98 Startup disk into the computer's floppy disk drive, and then restart the computer.

NOTE: If you do not have a Windows Me or Windows 98 Startup disk, click the article numbers below to view the articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
186300 How to Create a Windows 98 Startup Disk from MS-DOS
267287 How to Create a Startup Disk in Windows Me
2. Type the following line at the command prompt, and then press ENTER, where drive is the drive on which Windows is installed.
edit drive:\windows\setupact.log
3. Locate the following line, where Username is the name of the user account and xxxxxxxxxxxxx is the password for that account:
Random password for Username is xxxxxxxxxxxxx
4. Make a note of the password exactly as it appears in the Setupact.log file, and then quit the text editor.
5. Restart the computer, and then log on to the computer with the user account by using the password that you retrieved.

After you are logged on to the computer, reset the password for the user account by using User Accounts in Control Panel.
Windows XP Is Installed on a NTFS Partition
To retrieve the password from the Setupact.log file if Windows XP is installed on an NTFS partition, follow these steps:
1. Configure the computer to start from the CD-ROM drive or DVD-ROM drive. For more information about how to do this, please see the computer's documentation or contact the computer manufacturer.
2. Insert the Windows XP compact disc (CD) into the computer's CD-ROM drive or DVD-ROM drive, and then restart the computer.
3. When the Press any key to boot from CD message is displayed on your screen, press a key to start the computer from the Windows XP CD.
4. When the Welcome to Setup screen is displayed, press the R key to start the Recovery Console.
5. Select the installation that you need to access from the Recovery Console.
6. You are prompted for the Administrator password. If the Administrator password is set to use a blank password, just press ENTER.
7. At the command prompt, type the following line and then press ENTER:
type setupact.log
8. Locate the following line, where Username is the name of the user account and xxxxxxxxxxxxx is the password for that account:
Random password for Username is xxxxxxxxxxxxx
9. Make a note of the password exactly as it appears in the Setupact.log file.
10. Type exit at the command prompt, and then press ENTER to quit the Recovery Console and restart the computer.
11. Log on to the computer with the user account by using the password that you retrieved.

After you are logged on to the computer, reset the password for the user account by using User Accounts in Control Panel.
MORE INFORMATION
For additional information about the Windows XP Recovery Console, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
314058 Description of the Windows XP Recovery Console
307654 HOW TO: Install and Use the Recovery Console in Windows XP
The information in this article applies to:
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Last Reviewed: 8/6/2002 (1.0)
Keywords: kbenv kbprb KB318026
 
Perhaps a Registry hack is necessary...?
Dermot is on the ball though the MS KB should have an article to solve it if the above one is incorrect, they are also fairly prompt to reply if you decide to email them with the error.
 
That's an impressive document, Dermot. I've printed it out and will investigate further.

In the greater scheme of things, this is not a big deal. My password to log on to my ISP has not changed. The Windows dialer just defaults to an incorrect password, which I have to over-write when I log on. If I use the dialer installed by the ISP, the password is fine.

I've been using XP for two weeks and it hasn't locked up yet. Yesterday, for the first time, it wouldn't shut down, restart or go into standby, though it functioned just fine otherwise. I finally just shut the computer off and, when I rebooted, XP got back up, dusted itself off and got back to work without the usual "You idiot! You powered down improperly, so now we're going to make you wait while we examine every byte of your hard drive for errors" message.
 
Originally posted by Ron Eggers:
I've been using XP for two weeks and it hasn't locked up yet. Yesterday, for the first time, it wouldn't shut down, restart or go into standby, though it functioned just fine otherwise. I finally just shut the computer off and, when I rebooted, XP got back up, dusted itself off and got back to work without the usual "You idiot! You powered down improperly, so now we're going to make you wait while we examine every byte of your hard drive for errors" message.
That alone is worth the price of admission.
 
If you have it fixed congratulations

If not, or for the future...

START>CONTROL PANEL>INTERNET OPTIONS>CONNECTIONS
(highlight the connection, click on settings, in dial-up settings area change as needed)

or

With the save PW option checked there should be a messege saying "To change saved password click here." in the normal PW window click in the window, change PW and then un-check the save PW box. Connect, disconnect then re-connect and it should be the same and un-saved or blank waiting for the entry.

The MSN stuff is from the "auto fill" function of your MSN Passport. Bad bad Billy Gates stuff.
 
Didn't the "Terminator" movies deal with this very subject (albeit on a grander scale)? But it had to start somewhere. . . Computers thinking that they know more than their creators.

Scary business...
 
You might have something there, Walt.

When I get home, I'm gonna empty a couple of rounds from my 20-gage into my notebook and see if it regenerates itself.

I'll let you know.
 
Never mind, found what I was going to suggest in a prior post. Good luck

[ 03-23-2004, 08:31 PM: Message edited by: Dan ]
 
The password problem has been resolved in a most unexpected manner.

I was looking at the Windows Dialer dialog box. The saved password looked like this: ************. It should look like this: ******.

I thought, "What the ****!" and clicked the connect button to see what would happen. I fully expected a message saying my password was incorrect.

Instead, it connected.

I can only assume that one of XP's new security features is to prevent anyone from looking over your shoulder and finding out how many characters are in your password.

Windows ME made me think that the people who released it and the people who pre-installed it in new PCs were stupid.

Sometimes Windows XP makes me feel stupid.

But I love it anyway. I just have to learn to trust it.
 
OMG!!!

Never even thought of it... NT versions do that. As XP is based on that technology rather than the 9x platform I guess this is perhaps the first time you've come across it.
 
No, Lance, I haven't run across that before. I am gradually switching over from the "classic" interface to the new one to help remind me that I'm not in <strike>Kansas</strike> Windows 98 any more.

JPete, I must have spent a few hundred hours trying to get Windows ME to do what's it's supposed to do right out of the box. A few hours getting acquinted with XP is time well-spent.

Thanks to all of you who tried to help me with my un-problem.
 
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