Cannot type password in Windows XP Home login screen

Question

Lately whenever our netbook wakes from standby at the login screen, clicking any user brings the focus to that user and a textbox to enter the password, but there is no cursor in the textbox, and clicking within the textbox does not make one appear. Typing does not make any characters show up. The computer responds quickly to mouse clicks in this scenario but never lets me enter a password. If I put it back into standby and wake it up, same thing. The only way out seems to be to tell it to restart.

It wasn't like this when we got it, but I'm not sure at what point this started happening nor what might have caused the change. It's SP3 with all updates and a minimal amount of installed software, which hasn't changed recently, and isn't used for anything remotely dodgy. What could be causing this?

Answer 1

I have had this issue with several Windows XP virtual machines before. As a work-around, I would double-click on the top blue bar at top of the log-in screen (Microsoft doesn't mention this, but I thought you needed to do this to move your focus to a certain point), then press Ctrl+Alt+Delete twice. This will being up another method for logging-in, which I have never had issues with typing at. Unfortunately, you will have to type both your username and your password, but at least you can type at this point. I never found a solution to the problem previously, but had not had to deal with it recently.

After researching while typing this answer, I noticed that Microsoft recommends using the same workaround and has no solution to this issue. Here is the link to the Microsoft article discussing the issue.