Login Password - Allowed Characters?

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Level 1

14 points

Login Password - Allowed Characters?

Hey, the other day I had to work myself out of a bit of trouble; I changed the password for my admin account to my newly thought up super-password. OS X accepted my new password. Hooray!

Skip forwards 10 minutes, to see me with a panicked expression, attempting to log on with no success. My mind was racing - "Try the old one.. Try the new one (again).. Try variants of the new one; maybe you typoed.. twice! (hmm)".

Luckily, I had another (non-admin) account that I logged on to, and entered the "accounts" prefs, and changed my password back to my old one. Obviously, I had to enter my new password to do that, with no problems.

I wasn't entering the wrong password; the login prompt just wasn't accepting it. I logged out, and yep, old password worked fine. I changed my password to a new, simple password, login worked with it. I changed to a complex "good" password, login failed.

I narrowed it down to shift chars - !@£$%^ etc. If I used them, the password won't login, but will function within OS X just fine.

What's going on? I assume I'm either doing something stupid, or there's something wrong, because why would you be able to change your password to something that won't allow you to login?

Any ideas?!

Thanks, Ed

Mac Pro 8x2.8, 2GB RAM; MacBook Pro 2.2 C2D, 2GB RAM, Mac OS X (10.5.3)

Posted on Jul 31, 2008 8:01 AM

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Answer 1

Tim Haigh

Level 7

24,198 points

Jul 31, 2008 8:59 AM in response to Ed91

Apple have a knowledge base article titled choosing good passwords in Mac OS X which may help.

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Answer 2

Ed91 Author

Level 1

14 points

Jul 31, 2008 9:19 AM in response to Tim Haigh

Thanks, but choosing a good password isn't my problem. I suppose, to rephrase my question, are shift-modified characters such as $%^& supposed to work in the log on window as passwords? ..because my machine won't log on if they're used, and I'm quite sure that's not right.

As an update, they work for me if I use the fast user switching list, but not if I select "Login window" and attempt to log in from there.

Thanks again,

Ed

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Answer 3

Jul 31, 2008 9:37 AM in response to Ed91

Ed91,
This log in uses several shift modified characters. My others in three other accounts on this device do including root and in a total of eight other accounts on two other Macs
all have passwords that include shift modified characters, including some you mention. That is in OS 10.5.4 and 10.4.
I did once try three key characters, usually option and shift but the OS then did not like that. I have even used shift modified keys other than the top row numbers.

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Answer 4

Ed91 Author

Level 1

14 points

Jul 31, 2008 10:25 AM in response to Robert Newall

Thanks, I thought there must be something wrong, as they're fairly common for passwords and I couldn't understand what was going on.

I'm wondering if it's something to do with with the localisation of the keyboard. I remember when my MBP came, it was set to US, and I changed it to UK.. maybe the login screen expects the original, or something like that.. it would explain why the shift-numbers weren't accepted when logging on.

I don't have access to it at the moment to check that theory out, tough, my sister has stolen it from me; I'll report back a little later.

If anyone has any other ideas they'd be appreciated!

Thanks, Ed

Message was edited by: Ed91

Message was edited by: Ed91

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Answer 5

Jul 31, 2008 10:37 AM in response to Ed91

Ed,
I was just looking at Tom Gweke's site. He points out for his "language' purposes, the need to have Keyboard and system both on the same setting. One other thing that has caused me mysterious password problems is having accidentally activated the numlock keyboard. You would probably have noticed that though in other ways.

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Answer 6

Ed91 Author

Level 1

14 points

Aug 1, 2008 7:18 AM in response to Robert Newall

I just thought I'd let you know that I've got to the root of the problem. My keyboard uses the British layout, but as I said earlier, the OS originally came set to US layout, so I switched it to British - what I'm used to, and the keys markings match the output. It makes sense.

Then this saga happened. It seems that I was setting the password using the British layout, but the login screen was defaulting back to US, causing login problems on the keys that conflicted.

Anyone know how to change the system's default keyboard layout? I thought I'd done that, but apparently I only did it for my account.

Thanks for the help so far,

Ed

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Answer 7

Aug 2, 2008 8:31 AM in response to Ed91

Ed look in the Apple help under 'system language'. That may do the trick. However my Macs were set up ab initio as UK, I usually find it as 'English International'. Could I also suggest you list all the passwords and check which characters might have a different IP send in US/UK. I am surprised you would have any there are few differences. This is typed on a standard (US) Mac Pro KB. I tried to one with UK key layout but couldn't. The KB is set to the Union Flag in the top right icon. All I recall doing on set up of the Mac Pro was choosing English as the install language as against (say) Spanish. As already said I use various passwords with shift modifier and have no such problems as you.
In the final analysis you could change the passwords using the install disk to avoid having to enter an existing PW, choosing characters that send the same in US as UK.

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Answer 8

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

115,940 points

Aug 2, 2008 9:18 AM in response to Ed91

Anyone know how to change the system's default keyboard layout?

It's probably easier just to enable the input menu for the login screen and switch it to British when you need that. I think it is system prefs/accounts/login options.

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