First I am brand new to win7 and do not have it installed. I volunteer at a library providing a free service to assist computer challenged patrons to use computers. I had a problem yesterday I could not solve.
A person with a recently purchased laptop with Win7 Home prem could not logon to yahoo mail where he has an account. When he bought the laptop just recently a staffer at the computer store (not a big box store) which is part of a respected computer store chain (not the Shack) installed an icon on his desktop that would automatically logon him onto his yahoo mail account. Except it did not work - as soon as it opened yahoo mail it failed somehow and went to an error screen that had messages that showed the logon failed. I did not write down the messages and do not remember what they said - but it was a website message not an OS message. The patron said that with his old computer he could logon to that yahoo account ok.
I tried to access the yahoo mail account by closing and opening IE and navigating to yahoo mail - but even with that approach as soon a I got to yahoo mail the same thing happened where I was diverted to the same error screen, effectively preventing a logon to the account. From there I could not navigate to yahoo mail.
The desktop icon referenced a dos text file with two lines: one line with the logon id in the format "logon <logonid>" and a password line with the contents "password <password>". I altered the name of this file so whatever was triggering the logon would fail assuming that some event detection program would not find the logon and password and thus would fail to identify the account.
I then rebooted and opened IE and navigated to yahoo mail but as soon as I got to yahoo mail it went to the same error as before.
At that point I was stumped as to what may be triggering this activity. I have never seen an icon created on a desktop before that will get you to a website and then logon with the correct password. Ityook the easy way out and suggested to the patron to take the laptop back to the guy at the store.
I am knowledgeable about how to use DOS cmds and desktop icons in previous versions of windows but not knowing W7 I do not know if some special feature is being used to do this.
I would like to know how this logon using an icon and some other feature or program is done.
Any help would be appreciated.
A person with a recently purchased laptop with Win7 Home prem could not logon to yahoo mail where he has an account. When he bought the laptop just recently a staffer at the computer store (not a big box store) which is part of a respected computer store chain (not the Shack) installed an icon on his desktop that would automatically logon him onto his yahoo mail account. Except it did not work - as soon as it opened yahoo mail it failed somehow and went to an error screen that had messages that showed the logon failed. I did not write down the messages and do not remember what they said - but it was a website message not an OS message. The patron said that with his old computer he could logon to that yahoo account ok.
I tried to access the yahoo mail account by closing and opening IE and navigating to yahoo mail - but even with that approach as soon a I got to yahoo mail the same thing happened where I was diverted to the same error screen, effectively preventing a logon to the account. From there I could not navigate to yahoo mail.
The desktop icon referenced a dos text file with two lines: one line with the logon id in the format "logon <logonid>" and a password line with the contents "password <password>". I altered the name of this file so whatever was triggering the logon would fail assuming that some event detection program would not find the logon and password and thus would fail to identify the account.
I then rebooted and opened IE and navigated to yahoo mail but as soon as I got to yahoo mail it went to the same error as before.
At that point I was stumped as to what may be triggering this activity. I have never seen an icon created on a desktop before that will get you to a website and then logon with the correct password. Ityook the easy way out and suggested to the patron to take the laptop back to the guy at the store.
I am knowledgeable about how to use DOS cmds and desktop icons in previous versions of windows but not knowing W7 I do not know if some special feature is being used to do this.
I would like to know how this logon using an icon and some other feature or program is done.
Any help would be appreciated.