Your update messed up my computer!!
Posted by BoxHerOut@reddit | talesfromtechsupport | View on Reddit | 84 comments
Received a call, user states ever since IT implemented the new vpn every time her computer locks she needs to restart the computer to log in. She gave me the error message “smart card cannot be used” which sounded familiar but I looked thru footprints just to make sure. Then it became this message only appears when you leave the pin field blank. I said ma’am do you have num lock on? She said no, I said hit num lock and try it again, and voila she was able to log in again.
Now, I’ve had plenty calls about num lock before but this one had me confused because she claimed it only happened when the computer locked but not when she initially logged in. Then she comes out and says, “ I never thought about num lock, when I first log in I use the numbers about the letters on the top row” cue face palm
TL;DR please check num lock or at least be consistent with which set of numbers you use on the keyboard.
N8VAngel@reddit
This sounds like a US government laptop with a piv card. Upon initial boot, the user enters their pin number associated with their piv/cac card and has to enter it again later in the process. The second time it's entered, the numlock turns off automatically just prior to the entry field displaying, so someone not paying attention will get the error reported by this particular user.
SarahSunZzz@reddit
Oh man, isn't it classic when num lock causes chaos while we're just trying to save the day without face-palming too hard? 😅
kempff@reddit
Don't get me started on case-sensitive passwords entered with Caps Lock engaged.
Accentu@reddit
My story I love to tell when dealing with middle school/high school aged kids, was a kid about a decade ago who wasn't able to log in.
Stated his password had a "capital 8". And it wasn't a "*". To this day I have no idea what the issue was, I just reset it.
Ariaerisis@reddit
I don't know for 8 and *, but depending on the language of the keyboard, the special character isn't always the same. Like, on a French-Canadian keyboard, the special character over 2 is @, while on a multilingual-French keyboard, the character is ". He may've had a keyboard with a different language at home and went with the character over 8 for it, but the other keyboards would be in another language and that symbol is somewhere else there.
I sometimes open Word and type each symbol until i find the one i search, cuz the language of the keyboard chosen on the computer doesn't always fit with what is physically written on the keyboard.
At my work some colleagues thought a new password they were given didn't work, but it's simply that the password had the symbol # in it. So they tapped the # key on the keyboard, but, when they finally checked in Word what that wrote, it was a /. They had to do Shift + 3 to get the # symbol, then it worked.
dustojnikhummer@reddit
Was that in country that has characters on Shift+Numrow?
stekkedecat@reddit
in my country, the numbers are on Shift NumRow, and base numrow are &é"'(§è!çà
meitemark@reddit
My capital numbers are: !"#¤%&/()=
Strazdas1@reddit
My capitatl numbers are ĄČĘĖĮŠŲŪ()_Ž Non-capital numbers are ąčęėįšųū90-ž
Numpad is a must.
dustojnikhummer@reddit
Yeah my bad, same here. Shift is numbers, without shift is accented characters.
Maybe that kid really meant the number? Because without that he might have gotten á or something?
stekkedecat@reddit
the symbol i have behind the 8 on my keyboard is "!"
Planetx32@reddit
I wonder if it was &. It sort of looks like an 8.
Miserable-Package306@reddit
Who the f uses non-case-sensitive passwords?
tgrantt@reddit
We have an app that uses case-sensitive USERNAMES!
Cato0014@reddit
There are games that use case-sensitive usernames. This is not new or special
snootnoots@reddit
IIRC Square Enix accounts require you to link to an email address, and that field is case sensitive even if your email address isn’t. So people use this as a loophole to have multiple accounts linked to the same email address, which it normally won’t let you do.
Strazdas1@reddit
Fun fact: all emails are case sensitive. The email clients just work around it by lowercase() everything.
nitroll@reddit
Technically, the first part of an email address is not defined to be case insensitive, only the domain is. Now every sane email provider implements it as case insensitive for obvious reasons. But as a developer of a system using emails, should you follow the standard or practical convention? Like, it could be problematic if some weird provider did allow multiple different email accounts with different casings, that might be a security concern in your system. But on the other hand, Tons of peoples autocomplete might fill in email with a capital first letter, and if they used lower case on sign up, they will get a login error that their account was not found.
Cato0014@reddit
That's actually hilarious
tgrantt@reddit
Yeah, but for an educational record-keeping application, it's annoying
KelemvorSparkyfox@reddit
Anyone running an AS/400?
kempff@reddit
How about a PDP-11?
KelemvorSparkyfox@reddit
Not familiar with those.
kempff@reddit
1970s mainframe.
[looks in mirror in total surprise at hair on shoulders and age in eyes]
meitemark@reddit
Neither upper case nor symbols will really do anything to make a password more secure. The only thing that really counts is the length of a password. !"#¤%&/()= is a crappy short password that looks good. "happylongpasswordthatlooksbad" is way better.
Miserable-Package306@reddit
The more unique characters a password allows, the larger the security gain with each additional character. A 6-digit keypad code that only allows the numbers 0-9 is less secure than a 6-digit password that may contain upper and lowercase letters, numbers and symbols. About 304.000 times more secure assuming 20 allowed special characters, and about 10 times as strong as case-insensitive letters, numbers and symbols.
iAmHidingHere@reddit
Unfortunately it's seen as a usability improvement.
tuscaloser@reddit
A remarkable number of users toggle caps lock on to type a single uppercase letter, like when they start a sentence. It's baffling.
JulianaMac@reddit
They’re the same people who brake/accelerate with two feet
meitemark@reddit
I hit the clutch and the brakes at the same time, using two feet. How to accelerate with two feet ... nah, my footsies are too big :)
Strazdas1@reddit
I have a cousin who was very confused by the clutch, because "i dont have 3 feet".
To be fair, breaking with two feet made sense before braking hydraulics. You needed a lot of force on the pedal in the old days.
CleeBrummie@reddit
I had a user that was releasing the shift key a couple of milliseconds before typing the letter itself.
It took 20 minutes or so to realise what they were doing as they were typing so fast and I couldn't get her to slow down.
Birdbraned@reddit
Curiously, I have the opposite issue - I often make the mistake of typing DEar NAme,
STart of email body blah blah
Basically 9 out of 10 emails I send.
Strazdas1@reddit
Yes, THis HAppens.
NekkidWire@reddit
If your e-mail client supports it, try to turn on autocorrect. It helped me a lot.
kempff@reddit
Sounds like they thought typing a capital letter meant tapping both the shift and the letter at the same time, as opposed to holding down the shift button and while holding it down typing the letter then releasing the shift button.
As a computer lab attendant years ago I offhandedly advised a college student user to hit cloverleaf-a to Select All. I watched in disbelief as she tapped both keys simultaneously, only to roll her eyes and give up as it inexplicably didn't work.
erwin76@reddit
Around ‘95 a customer once couldn’t get anywhere with my colleague until my colleague told him when he pressed the SHIFT key, he needed to keep it depressed while also pressing another key, instead of pressing them one after another. I think my colleague spent a good 30 minutes on that…
Loafer72@reddit
It seems to be something children learn before their handspan is wide enough to hold shift and hit letter keys one-handed. Some never grow out of it.
analogrival@reddit
I've got users 40+ doing this. I have no idea where they got this from.
action_lawyer_comics@reddit
From being generally computer illiterate
LupercaniusAB@reddit
Hell, that’s typewriter illiterate.
kempff@reddit
Age range checks out. High schools phased out typing on mechanical typewriters in the 1990s.
Strazdas1@reddit
Highschools had typewritters? Ours went 100% handwritting until about 2000, then teachers got half-dead second hand desktops.
analogrival@reddit
Had one at home, but my elementary school had just moved on to Apple II by the time I was ready to learn to type. Used both for a while lol
can3gxw@reddit
Typing passwords that start with a capital CAPS LOCK ON Type first letter CAPS LOCK OFF Type rest of password
kempff@reddit
OK LET ME TRY THAT
pASSWORD123
IT SAYS PASS-ERR-LOGIN SEE YOUR UPDATE MESSED MY COMPUTER UP
Chakkoty@reddit
The tragedy is that those people probably simply learned it that way and never got used to using Shift...this is not a generational problem, even typewriters had CAPS LOCK and Shift keys. That's why it's called Shift, because it shifted the mechanical part for the letter to a capitalised one. This is why it's also called "Shift Lock". Because it would lock the "Shift" in place until unlocked. Useful when typing out standardized headlines which were always in caps, as some typewriter models would actively fight the person trying to press a button, especially when poorly maintained, at least compared to the buttery smooth, compliant click of modern mechanical keyboards.
ApplicationHour@reddit
Was that an uppercase 7? Or was it lowercase?
kempff@reddit
You mean the European 7 with the crossbar? "~~7~~"
Ricama@reddit
Our login screen went red with big letters informing us if the caps lock was on. I guess it got that bad.
mwenechanga@reddit
This is 100% Microsoft’s doing. It looks like windows 11 is defaulting to chapstick off, causing lords of confusion for windows 10 users.
Strazdas1@reddit
all windows defaulted to numlock off unless you changed settings/bios.
mwenechanga@reddit
No
dustojnikhummer@reddit
Windows has had this since I could remember. I could understand it in the Sandy Bridge era with those weird numpads on UIO, but nowadays...
mwenechanga@reddit
The option to to turn numlock off at the Lock Screen has been in Windows 10 forever, but them defaulting to off has never been an issue until we started deploying Windows 11 in place upgrades. Just a weird new behavior to further annoy end users.
Cato0014@reddit
You have to turn on numlock on in BIOS. It's never been on an any version of Windows from the factory
dustojnikhummer@reddit
That's for Bitlocker. For some reason Windows has its own toggle (only in registry) that is OFF by default
mwenechanga@reddit
I’m talking about Windows 11 turning it off when it gets to the lock screen, even though it’s enabled during boot. It’s a real nuisance. There is a registry fix for it though.
zaro3785@reddit
HPs with 10 also had it off
MusicBrownies@reddit
LOL...
zaro3785@reddit
I am not proper IT, but I set up everyone's new computers at work (amongst other things), and one of my steps is to enable NumLock in the registry
UnjustlyBannd@reddit
If not at the BIOS level
Strazdas1@reddit
It gets worse. Nulock enabled at BIOS, disabled at login, then enabled again. Except if you eneable at manually at login windows will disable it after login as a result. Infuriating.
PhoenixFox@reddit
I have a vivid memory of when I was a kid and getting set up with an account to use the computers at my library, the elderly librarian doing it asked if I wanted the numbers in my password to be the numbers from above the keyboard or the numbers from the right of the keyboard...
5p4n911@reddit
Did you make them aware that they were the same or just picked one?
Strazdas1@reddit
It can be the same but are recognized as different inputs on the OS interface. So Num4 and 4 is not the same thing until it get converted into a string.
5p4n911@reddit
I don't think you'd want to explain that to the poor librarian
redmercuryvendor@reddit
Oh, it can be so much worse.
e.g. enforcing password requirements to contain at least one special character, then pushing a thin client update that will sometimes-but-not-always switch keyboard locates between UK-english and US-english, and may do so before initial SSO login, between SSO login and windows lockscreen, or after windows login.
Yeah, that was a fun one to diagnose, especially when the user has tried to do the right thing and attempted the self-service password reset.
Strazdas1@reddit
Also fun with localized language keyboards, as those replace most of the special symbols. Its why i live using underscore, its rarely replaced on any localization.
rcp9ty@reddit
Ugh uk-english keyboards is why I hated some of the emulation I used on the pi a couple years ago. Nothing like changing the location and keyboard just so you could type in commands made by Americans. For uk-english software. Special characters suck and have different locations on the keyboard.
the_mooseman@reddit
Was right about to bring up Pis. My God, UK keyboard, why?
sonic_sabbath@reddit
I live in Japan, and have one keyboard which is Japanese (one I use at work), and another which is English (which I use at home) - it is sometimes annoying to have to remember the special character placement for each one...
rcp9ty@reddit
What I don't understand is why special characters get different spots. I mean a special character doesn't change in a language it's not like ! means anything different in any other languages.... Now if it's the ¡ or ¿ I get it.
FeliciaGLXi@reddit
My language (Czech) has a lot of accented letters and the Czech keyboard layout places the most common ones in the number row. You need to use shift to type numbers and special like brackets are placed elsewhere. Sure, you could just use the accent key + the letter, but that would make typing super slow.
DanNeely@reddit
There's a slight variation in the number and placement of (accented) letter characters in the European alphabetic layouts. I assume the special character chaos reflects independent development in the type writer era on top of those base layout variations.
sonic_sabbath@reddit
I don't know why either!
Only difference in the number of characters for my JP board is that the \ key doubles as a ￥ key. Have a $ key as well as usual
Warrangota@reddit
I live in Germany but really hate the German keyboard and it's special characters for anything Terminal, which is like half my job as sysadmin.
Private main PC: English International with EurKEY layout.
Private Laptop: English International with EurKEY layout.
Private Surface: spent some extra money, so English International with EurKEY.
Office keyboard with the dock on my desk: English International with EurKEY layout.
The laptop without that dock: German :(
I really have to think hard when on the go, both if the labels match and don't match. German layout or blind typing with EurKEY.
Strazdas1@reddit
I hate how inconsistent num locks are. My current work issue laptop has numlock on during drive encrpytion pin code but then shuts down numlock before loading windows. Except - it does not always do this, so it can be a lottery.
woofsauce@reddit
I know someone who complains she needs to enter password 3 times for logging into windows, that's because she is doing this: 1. Type password incorrectly 2. Wrong password prompt is shown, does not bother clicking ok. Proceed to enter password again, and hit enter which clicked ok or something. 3. Type password again, which happen to be correct this time
androshalforc1@reddit
TBF this sounds like a pretty good user.
She recognized a problem, Ideally world have been able to done this one herself.
She called in, not sure if that’s acceptable or you want a ticket first.
She gave you the actual error, this elevates her above 95% of users.
When given the solution sure didn’t throw a fit, and recognized what lead to the problem and how to prevent it in the future.
As for which numbers she’s using tiffs is completely reasonable. If on first login i need to type my user name and a pin my heads are near the number rite so that’s what I’m using. After that if i only need to type a number pin Im using the pad.
stekkedecat@reddit
Numlock is its special kind of issue: I'm used to using numlock, and having it on all the time. And with some restarts, I have to re-engage it... It always takes me 2 login attempts before I realise it disengaged again. It used to be a big problem about 5 years ago, then I had a client pc that didn't have the issue, and now, with this new client's hardware, its an issue again... I have no clue what the difference is, but some IT departments know how to fix this issue, others don't...
HaggisLad@reddit
my username has numbers and I remember it by the shape it makes on the numpad, it's just routine to turn it on every login. Oddly I do my password using the row of numbers
ctesibius@reddit
My favourite smartcard story: the company I worked for was large enough to get semi-custom builds from Dell. In this case they had ordered a corporate laptop with the smartcard option deleted. That’s fine: thousands of staff used them without problems. Only I was doing some SIM development and wanted to see if I could get away without an external smartcard reader. So I stuffed a test SIM (still in its credit-card sized form) in to the smartcard slot, since there was no documentation that the hardware had been deleted. As it happens, Dell hadn’t bothered to blank off the slot, so my development SIM disappeared in to the bowels of the machine. Cue one trip down to the hardware IT guys.
Elevated_Misanthropy@reddit
TBH, I thought this was going to be a story about the bug in AcrivClient that causes the Dell onboard cardreader to disappear if thr smartcard is removed after the screen locks.