I received a new laptop for work (a Dell D830) and had a fairly easy time getting it setup for development. To my dismay, I notice periodic Blue Screens of Death (BSOD) while booting into Windows Vista. I looked up the error codes and was unable to find a cause and since my system always seemed to boot normally the next time.
Talking with a co-worker of mine that got a new laptop when I did, we both experienced seemingly random BSODs and were always a bit suspect of the Fingerprint scanner. I didn't really worry about it too much. That is, until this morning.
While booting this morning, I got another BSOD. When my system booted again, I was unable to logon to Windows Vista. Every time I would put in my username and password I would get the following error message.
"Logon failure: unknown user name or bad password."
I also noticed that I wasn't given the option to use my D830's Fingerprint scanner to logon either. I tried logging onto domain accounts and local account with no luck. I rebooted multiple times. I used Vistas startup repair tool with no luck. It was looking like I might have to hit a restore point or restore an image of my laptop.
Luckily for me, my boss had experienced a similar issue. The fix is a mixture of disabling your Fingerprint scanner and Dell's Embassy Security Center. The first step is to boot into Safe Mode by pressing F8 before windows boots and selecting it from the boot menu. You should be able to logon to windows in safe mode (if not, you might have a different issue.) Once you are logged on, perform the following.
Disable the Fingerprint scanner
(this step might be optional, since the second step might do it automatically.)
- Press your Windows Key and type "Device Manager" and hit Enter to bring up the device manager.
- Under Biometrics, right click on your fingerprint scanner and select Disable
- Close the device manager
Turn off Secure Windows Login in Embassy Security Center
- Press your Windows Key and type "Embassy Security Center" and press Enter (if you don't have this application, you probably have a different issue going on.)
- Click on Windows Logon
- Uncheck Enable Secure Windows Logon
- Click Apply and close Embassy Security Center
After performing these steps, reboot your machine normally and try to login again. Worked great for us on our Dell D830 and was a bit of a pain to track down. I might post an update and let you know if this also clears up my random BSODs.
Hope this helps someone. =)
8 comments:
Great Post had the exact same issue. fixed it Thanks
Shouldn't need to disable the device. Disabling Secure Windows Login is all that is required to resolve this issue. That aspect of the Embassy Trust Suite / Embassy Security Center (DELL) has never functioned correctly.
Very helpful! Thank you for posting!
Thank you so much! I was about to kick something. This fixed it for me as well!
Thank You, This worked for me too. Had lost all hopes :)
Thank you!! Thank you!! Thank you!! Hubby had his new computer home for two hours and the same thing happened. Now he owes me something pretty. :)
Thank you! I was just going to format my disk when I found your post. It worked perfect! Thaks again!
Thank you thank you thank you! You didn't have to take the time to post this but because you did you saved us all a lot of time and frustration. MUCH appreciated~!
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