I recently agreed to help a friend of mine, who I'll call Bill, with his Gmail on his computer. I warned him that I didn't do Windoze, and since I had already installed Linux Mint on his computer as a dual boot with Windoze 7 a year ago, I used Linux. I quickly got his machine connected to my WiFi, and set him up a toolbar bookmark to the Gmail login screen, but when I asked him what his user name was he said: "Username?? I never needed one of those with Windoze 7!"
Well, he dug around in his wallet and came up with a user name that worked, but none of the passwords he had written down did. I knew from my one experience with Gmail that recovering a lost password was going to be next to impossible, but I gave it a try anyway. I had Google email a security code to my computer, but when I entered it in his machine, it gave me an error message similar to this: "We don't recognize the machine you're on, and even though we just sent this code to an email address you supplied, we can't be sure this is really you! Naa! Naa! Naa!". Ok, I lied about the Naas. Back before I retired, a guy in my department called some of our IT people who wanted to implement this kind of ridiculous security: "Data **bleep**s"
I reluctantly booted up Windoze 7, and it seemed to be set up for a single user. I immediately noticed that there was no network icon at the bottom right. He told me: "Well it was there yesterday! I was just on their WiFi down at So and So's." When I looked at his network, there wasn't even a WiFi setup available, just a 3g connection.
Well, Bill, sorry I couldn't help you, I told you I didn't do Windoze, and BTW please NEVER touch one of my computers. Maybe you shouldn't even look at one too hard!
Probably someone with more expertise than I, could have recovered his password for him, most likely from Windoze 7, since it must have been logging in to Gmail automatically for him at one time. How he ever did so recently with no WiFi connection setup is beyond me. I probably missed something obvious, after all, I don't do Windoze.
I think I need to retire again, this time from the computer help for free business.
BTW all of the **bleeps** originally referred to a German political party that existed during WWII Have we became so politicaly correct that their name can no longer be even mentioned, or is it just the **bleep** bug?
