Leaving Space For Silly Problems

I supported a school computer lab for several years, and this particular issue happened a lot. It was always a quick “fix,” but I still recall the sheepish realization that the first offender and I both shared early in my tenure.

A help desk student came to my office to inform me of a user with a login issue. I reset the user’s password.

Me: “Have the user try it again.”

A few minutes later, they were back.

Student: “The new password didn’t work.”

I confirmed that the new password DID work on a machine in my office. Maybe the lab machine was off the network? Nope, it pinged fine. Lost its domain binding? Nope, still listed. Strange. I went to investigate.

The user was sitting there, trying different passwords over and over. They verified their username again, and everything looked right.

User: “I’ve tried every password I’ve ever used, plus the one you gave me. None of them work. I also tried it on that computer, but it’s broken, too.”

I turn to the other computer.

Me: “Let me try a different account.”

It worked. I checked networking and domain settings for good measure and all were good. I checked the user’s account with the temporary password I had set, and… it worked, too.

User: “What? How? My login still won’t work over here, though. Let me try the computer I sit at for class. I don’t want to be locked out again later.”

I watched as they moved down a few seats, tapped the space bar to wake the screen, and then proceeded to attempt to log in. No luck. Then, they slid down to another seat. “Tap, tap, tap, tap” on the space bar to wake it up. Still no login.

I checked the first machine again, and that’s when I saw that, in waking the machine, they’d managed to type a single space in the username field before their username. They felt pretty silly about it, and I felt like a dummy for missing such a simple error.

The help desk now has a help document that instructs users to completely clear both the username and password fields before trying again, and I’ve habitually only used CTRL, SHIFT, or the mouse to wake computers since then.