Weird one... (couldn't unlock from sleep)

1. Ted Lee - 2 May 2008

   I hate it when there are irreproducible faults, although in this case I guess it's better than a permanent serious one. I went to wake up my Powerbook G4 (running 10.4.something), which I have set to require a password to wake from sleep. I enter my password and it tells me wrong name or password. OK, must have mistyped (that first character getting lost sometimes thing maybe.) Didn't work. Tried a couple of more times, typing very slowly. No joy. Eventually got the "failed too many times" error. OK, I have a couple of other accounts on the machine, so I told it to switch users and tried a different one. Same problem -- wouldn't take the password and eventually got the "too many times" error. Wondering how I'm going to recover from this (envisioning I'm going to have to find my master password) I shut it down by pressing and holding the power switch -- at least that worked! Restarted and everything's fine. Go figure.

   Ted Lee
   Minnetonka, MN

2. Jolly Roger - 2 May 2008

   There were likely errors logged to the system and console log during those failed attempts. Those errors may help you determine what was going on.

   Please send all responses to the relevant news group. E-mail sent to this address may be devoured by my very hungry SPAM filter. I do not read posts from Google Groups. Use a real news reader if you want me to see your posts.

   JR

3. Ted Lee - 2 May 2008

   Oh, I know that -- just too lazy to bother at the time.

   Ted Lee
   Minnetonka, MN

4. Jolly Roger - 2 May 2008

   Oh, ok... then you'll excuse the rest of us if we don't bother wasting time helping you with this one. I mean, if you're too lazy to help yourself... ; )

   Please send all responses to the relevant news group. E-mail sent to this address may be devoured by my very hungry SPAM filter. I do not read posts from Google Groups. Use a real news reader if you want me to see your posts.

   JR

5. Sander Tekelenburg - 2 May 2008

   Sounds like you accidentally changed to another keyboard input method and were in fact typing different characters than you intended -- which you wouldn't see in a passphrase field...

   If you enable the "Show Input menu in Login Window" option (Sys Prefs->Accounts->Login Options) you will be able to solve this problem when it occurs.

   However:

   Restarted and everything's fine.

   I wouldn't have thought a reboot would reset the input method. So maybe the problem was something else after all...

   Sander Tekelenburg, <http://www.euronet.nl/~tekelenb/>

   Mac user: "Macs only have 40 viruses, tops!"
   PC user: "SEE! Not even the virus writers support Macs!"