One of the scariest things which can happen when using your computer can be the fear of never being about to get back into it again if you are locked out.

After all, we keep all our precious information on our computers, our work information, email, personal information and not to mention memories such as videos, pictures and entertainment.

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Typing in your password and seeing, “Password is incorrect. Try again” can be terrifying. But fortunately there is a good chance you can either get back into your computer, or retrieve the data from it.

Reasons You Might Be Locked Out of Your Computer

Your simply might have forgotten

It happens, sometimes you might have just chanced the password and accidentally typed it in the wrong way, other times we just get too use to typing it so fast we make a mistake.

It happens so often. The customer has typed it in 1000 times and it simply doesn’t work. Then they tell us the password and it works first time.

Broken Keyboard

Keyboards like everything else in your computer have a shelf life and break.

If your computer is faulty and playing up, it might not be transmitting the correct keys when your press them to the motherboard and operating system resulting in your password not being correct.

Hacked/Virus

Yep, its a real possibility. Computers are still getting hacked and controlled by peoples over the internet and its happening more and more every year.

There are also computer programs out there, viruses and malware which change your password or corrupt your operating system and you are no longer able to login using your computers keyboard or front end.

Windows Updates

Windows updates don’t always go as planned. It is not uncommon for things to go a little strange when a Windows Update has occurred.

Some uses report getting a back screen afterwards, some report not being able to login, and others are unable to start their computer at all.

A lot of Windows Updates problems can simply be fixed with a restart, but sometimes a restart can be complicated in this state as well.

How to Get Back into Your Computer

This is a really complicated question and there is not one fix fits all.

It will really depend on what has happened to your computer and some sort of analysis to diagnose the cause will be needed to determine which course of action is taken.

Crossing the wrong course of action can make it harder to get into your computer, or even worse lock you out or delete all your data for ever.

Offline Virus Scan

The absolute first thing you should do is scan your hard drive.  I know what you are thinking, how can I scan it if I am unable to get in?

There are two ways to do this. The first is to make a USB bootable operating system or USB virus scanner and boot form your USB and scan your drive.

The second is to take your internal hard drive out, mount it into another computer which is not infected and scan the drive manually.

If you find a virus, you might be able to remove it throughout the process which might fix the problem.

Corrupt Operating System

If your computer has a corrupt operating system or there are errors on it from software, updates or accidental deleted files you might be able to repair it in safe mode.

Be very careful when you go down this way because if you choose the wrong option you might end up deleting all the files off your hard drive and unable to ever get them back again.

There are differences between doing a system restore, a refresh and a reset which I will cover in another post. A refresh would be your best option but do your own research first to see what is best for you and if in doubt do not do anything – unless you have a a previous recent backup.

Mount Your Hard Drive in Another Computer

If your password is unrecoverable you might be able to take your hard drive out of your computer and mount it into another machine.

If your drive is not encrypted it should show up as another drive like “E:”.

When that happens you will be able to hopefully grab all the files you need from your drive,  and store them on another computer through copy and paste.

Then return your hard drive back into its computer and do a total reset and copy your files back to it.

Do you Have an Online Account?

I don’t particularly like online accounts for my personal computer.

This is a personal choice but there is much debate as to what they store and how much of your data is considered safe and secure and to what extent.

I am not going to get into that here but if you choose to have an online Microsoft Account for your computer, you should be able to login to Microsoft and change your password using a different computer.

When you go back to your computer it will need to be connected to the internet to get the new password and you will be able to log in again.

If you can’t it probably means there is a software problem on your computer, or a keyboard problem like mentioned above.

Townsville Nerds Can Help

Computer repairs Townsville Nerds can help you with situations like this. We see this problem at-least a couple of times a week and we have a very good track record.

Our priority is making sure you have all your data, Most of the time we are able to do this.

In the event your computer must be reset back to an earlier point in time or back to like how you got it we will recover the data first, but not do anything before talking to you.

When I say most times, its because most of the time we can take the hard drive out and mount it into a different computer and recover your data.

However, in the even you encrypt your data and do not have an online account, it can make things much more difficult.