Sometimes you just get a feeling when you’re talking to someone about the cause of a problem, and I had a hunch that this one was due to user error. Her password was very simple (Happy12) yet she couldn’t get it to work. I could log in as her on my computer, so there was definitely something screwy going on with her side.

A common mistake is having the capslock key on so that it inverts your password (hAPPY12). I told her to turn it off, but she told me that she was “only using it for that one letter”.

That seemed somewhat suspicious as when you only have one capital letter, isn’t it much easier to use the Shift key?

Come to find out, this lady had a routine when typing in her password: “caplock, h, capslock, a, p, p, y, 1, 2″. When she came in today, someone had left the capslock on, so her routine was causing her to invert the password.

I explained how if you hold down the shift button you’ll only capitalize the one letter and how much easier it is, and she was amazed that the shift key could do such a thing. In her words, “I thought you just used it to get the symbols above the numbers.”

I also explained how the little light would tell you when the caplock was on. She couldn’t find it for awhile, and when she said she did finally see it, I promise you she was looking at the light on the monitor.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/ThisIsWhyYourHoldTimeIsSoLong