Invalid password on Win11

Went to help a friend install a program on her Win11 Home, HP i3. She has been running this Win11 PC for about 5 months or so with no problems.

Before installing the program, I decided to shutdown her PC and do a power on boot to have a fresh copy of Win11 running. Shutdown her PC and did a power on boot. When it got to the Win11 splash screen, entered her Win11 password but got a "Invalid password" error. Kept getting the Invalid password error. I clicked the eye icon to show the password to insure that the password was correct. She has been booting this Win11 PC for 5 months and entering the password successfully until today. 100% guaranteed that the password we entered was correct.

Why, all of a sudden Win11 decided that her password was invalid is a mystery.

Is getting an "Invalid password" error something that others have experienced on their copy of Win11 Home?
Any ideas?

mck said:

Why, all of a sudden Win11 decided that her password was invalid is a mystery.
Is getting an "Invalid password" error something that others have experienced on their copy of Win11 Home?

Click to expand...

Does she use a Local account or a Microsoft account.

This is why I always add a second admin account to my computers. It rarely gets used, but if the primary account gets corrupted for some reason, it's nice to have an easy way to login.

Does it have bitlocker enabled?
Otherwise you could use a bootable locksmith and change the password thatway.
For example with Hirens Boot USB

Bree said:

Does she use a Local account or a Microsoft account.

Click to expand...

A local account.

mck said:

A local account.

Click to expand...

That makes life easier, a Microsoft account is difficult to reset. Enable the built-in Administrator account and use that to reset the password. You'll need to use Option Five in this tutorial.

Tester said:

Does it have bitlocker enabled?
Otherwise you could use a bootable locksmith and change the password thatway.
For example with Hirens Boot USB

Click to expand...

Bitlocker is not enabled. Nor any other type of encryption.

The weird thing is that I restored a backup of her C drive which completed successfully. But the restored Win11 still said Invalid Password. However, then we noticed under the large "INVALID PASSWORD", in small print "Reset your password". So we clicked that and it asked 3 security questions which she answered. Then it asked for the new password with confirmation and the new password worked.

So she's up and running with her restored C system drive, using a new password.

Again, all we did was shutdown Win11 and then do a power on boot. Absolutely nothing else was done. After the first two invalid password errors, when we entered the Win11 password again, I clicked the eye icon and saw that the password was correct in all lowercase as it should be. But we replaced her wireless keyboard with a USB keyboard anyway and it also had the invalid password problem. So it was definitely not a bad keyboard. Anyway, clicking the eye icon showed that the password was 100% correct in all lowercase as it should be using both keyboards so the keyboards were good.

But my question is, why did the invalid password problem happen in the first place?
Has this happened to anyone else on this forum?

mck said:

"Reset your password". So we clicked that and it asked 3 security questions which she answered.

Click to expand...

I always find that options to easy to awser, especially if your a family member.
I aways use generated random strings for those questions...

Glad to hear you got back into the account.

In this guide, i present a straightforward method for resetting Windows local user accounts password using Hiren's BootCD PE (Preinstallation Environment).

FreeBooter said:

In this guide, i present a straightforward method for resetting Windows local user accounts password using Hiren's BootCD PE (Preinstallation Environment).

link omitted to save bandwidth.

Click to expand...

Thanks for your input, which may come in handy in the future.

this also maybe of use as the 'password' has a timeout
which would mean that after a set time a new password would be required.

best of luck, Steve ..

XxXxX said:

this also maybe of use as the 'password' has a timeout
which would mean that after a set time a new password would be required.

Enable or Disable Password Expiration in Windows 11

This tutorial will show you how to enable or disable password expiration for an account in Windows 10 and Windows 11. When you enable password expiration for an account, the user will be forced to change their password the next time they sign in when it expires. A local account password will...

www.elevenforum.com

best of luck, Steve ..

Click to expand...

Never knew that there was a Win11 password expiration "feature". Googling said that by default, local accounts in Windows 11 do not have their passwords expire. Her Win11 is using a local account. But one never knows what a Windows update will do. Windows updates can work in mysterious ways .. .
Thanks for the enlightenment!

mck said:

Never knew that there was a Win11 password expiration "feature". Googling said that by default, local accounts in Windows 11 do not have their passwords expire. Her Win11 is using a local account. But one never knows what a Windows update will do. Windows updates can work in mysterious ways .. .
Thanks for the enlightenment!

Click to expand...

I've never set anything for my local accounts, and my passwords never expire, at least not for the time since installation of Win11. My wife's Win11 has been in place for well over a year with the same PW.

mck said:

Googling said that by default, local accounts in Windows 11 do not have their passwords expire. Her Win11 is using a local account.

Click to expand...

gunrunnerjohn said:

I've never set anything for my local accounts, and my passwords never expire, at least not for the time since installation of Win11.

Click to expand...

By default Windows 10/11 passwords do not expire. However, once in a while an install may skip this default for no apparent reason. I had that happen to me on a W10 PC a few years back. Still have no idea why, but for that one PC I had to turn off password expiry myself.