Dear LPG,

I know that I am a real latecomer to computing but lockdown has given us all a lot of time to adapt to new things. I was a typist years ago and the touch-typing rules came back to me very quickly although my fingers get to the keys a lot slower these days. 

I have established an email address and found a few website accounts that interest me which I have registered with, and I have been good and have a secret place to hide the little book where I keep all my passwords.  The rules they give when it comes to passwords have always intrigued me though.  Even in the short time that I have got involved, you always need to include a capital letter and one number while some are now asking for a symbol as well (! ~ * etc.).

But one day recently I just could not get into a couple of my accounts.  The little dots or asterisk seemed to register but, I was getting nowhere with any of them.  I am not sure if it has ever happened to you but it got me questioning my memory as I kept putting in the codes that I have learned so well and getting no joy.  I even resorted to finding that hidden place in the most unsuspecting book where you write such things down, but without success.

If it had just been one account that I could not access, I would have started that ‘forgotten your password?’ process where you request an email which helps you to set up a new password, but it just seemed like too much of a coincidence that I could not get into anything including the email address that those ‘forgotten your password?’ emails would have been sent to.

I spent the best part of an hour trying to find out what I had done wrong.  I sat there repeating all the things that worked perfectly before, and then followed that strategy where, if you go away and do something completely different for a while before returning, the problem might well right itself.  But nothing was working.  I eventually phoned one or two of my IT savvy friends, but with all their advice, I could not get into anything.

I am so glad that we can have visitors a bit more often these days, because I explained my problem to my visiting granddaughter and, as soon as we opened the computer up she could see what the problem was.  I had inadvertently pressed the ’Num Lock’ button which meant that my laptop was unable to produce any numbers at all.  She tells me that on desktop keyboards which have a number pad, it is nearly always just above the number 7 key, but nearly every laptop (and even tablet) has one, it is just a matter of working out where.  All she did was press it again and the problem completely disappeared. 

It took me over a week to learn that one button, which has always been there, could cause so much anguish and so I thought I would pass that message on…

MC, Brockley

MC found us a little information…

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