GOT IT! You all aren't going to believe this one: after sending hours of surfing the web, I found another poor sole (it was actually on this forum) had this same problem and fixed by, believe it or not, setting the windows clock to the correct time. When I read it, I laughed, but noticed that my clock in the sys tray was set ahead a few days. I set it to the correct time and date, restarted and everything is now working!!! Strangest thing I've every seen.
Thanks to Rodger!
'Logon failure: Unknown user or bad password' *solved!*
Hi All,
I thought that I would share a fix that I found for the persistent username/password failure when trying to access shared folders on a second machine. In the last two days I have searched hundreds of forum/help posts from people encountering the same problem, and for the most part the responses were unhelpful/assumed_in-depth_technical_problems/assumed_the_OP_was_a_bit_thick, and so on. As with so many problems, the cause and the fix (in my case) were dead simple. If the system error message had been a bit more on point, the fix would also have been quick!
My system: A new i7 running Windows 7 RC1 64-bit, an older Athelon running Win2k Professional, both wired to a Linksys wireless router, and several laptops (XP, etc) with wireless connection to the router.
The Win7 installation was the most pain-free Windows installation I have ever done, and getting everything talking and sharing was but a few minutes work. A few days later I embarked on some fairly complicated tests involving a couple of virtual machines on the Win2k system, and manipulating their VHDs from the Win7 machine (mounted via DiskPart). While the tests all went well, when I shut the VMs down I discovered that the network was broken, Attempting to access anything on the Win2k system from the Win7 system prompted the dialog box asking me to enter a network username/password. Anything I entered was rejected with the error 'Logon failure: Unknown user or bad password'. Cutting a long story short, I eventually realized that the Win7 workgroup name had reverted to the default 'WORKGROUP'. I corrected that, but the dialog error persisted, although the message changed slightly to 'The specified network password is not correct'. While I was pondering that, Win7 reset the workgroup name back to WORKGROUP (I've no idea why). The error message reverted to the original, so that immediately alerted me, and I set it back to the correct name again.
While looking for clues on the Win2k system I realized that the date was wrong (I had set it forward ten days as part of the tests that I had been doing). I set it back to the correct date AND ALL PROBLEMS DISAPPEARED. Win7 prompted me for a username/password which I entered and which was immediately accepted, and I had full access again.
In forty years of working with computers I've seen some pretty misleading error messages, but I think this one comes close to taking the cake!
I hope this helps someone.
Regards,
Roger