OS encryption installation - wrong password
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Hey,
I installed VeraCrypt, or let's say I tried to ;)
When I reboot to make sure everything is working, I won't get behind "wrong password".
It keeps telling me the password is wrong, while I'm 100 percent sure I typed it correctly.
Had the same problem with Truecrypt too, on this computer.
VC volumes are no problem. Used the same password for a volume and it was fine.
I don't use any AV program. Reinstalled windows, but it's still not working.
Any ideas? Would love to finally encrypt my whole pc :)
Thanks a lot, I really appreciate the work you put in this project by the way!
Kind regards,
Anonymous
Hi,
Since you had the same issue with TrueCrypt on this computer, the only possible explanation I see is that you keyboard in BIOS mode doesn't map some of the keys to their same value on Windows mode.
One thing you should know is that under BIOS, all keyboards are seen as having US layout. This is part of the BIOS specification and that's why TrueCrypt/VeraCrypt automatically switched the keyboard on Windows to US layout when you type the boot password during the process of encrypting system partition.
Normally this works as the US layout on Windows is normally the same as US layout on BIOS mode.
On your machine, maybe there is something special about your keyboard (or your Windows), that makes US layout not identical between Windows and BIOS.
What is the language of your Windows and what's the layout of your keyboard?
Can you try with the password eeee? The letter e is stable across most layouts and if it works this would mean the the issue is on some special characters you use on your password.
Also, if you have number in your password, always type the number using the same method used when encrypting the partition on Windows: if you used numeric pad on Windows, use numeric pad on boot and if you didn't use numeric pad on Windows, don't use numeric pad on boot.
Hey,
well that was exactly was I thought aswell.
And I just tried it with the password you suggested (eee), and this one worked for me.
So I guess it's a different keyboard layout in the BIOS mode.
The language of my windows is german, so is the layout of my keyboard.
I'm using Windows 7 and the motherboard is from Gigabyte.
I don't use the num pad for entering the password.
Thanks for your help :)
Hi,
One possible explanation of the issue on your PC is that you don't have the US keyboard configured in your Windows and you only have the German one. Is it the case?
If yes, then you just have to add the US keyboard layout by going to "Control Panel" -> "Region and Language" -> "Keyboards and Languages" -> "Change Keyboards" and their click Add to add the US language keyboard. Here is how it looks on a French PC:
Does this solves your issue?
Last edit: Mounir IDRASSI 2015-03-31
I just checked out the keyboard configuartion.
Looks exactly like yours. I went to the VC installation after, to check if it changes the keyboard layout when typing in the password, and it does. So everything seems to be working correctly to this point.
OK. So, if you still have the error, then the only explanation is that your BIOS doesn't map the non ASCII characters the same way Windows do.
This could be a bug of the BIOS or a limitation with regards to the special characters you are using.
The safest choice in this case of boot encryption is to stick with extended ASCII characters and avoid any language specific ones like the German Umlauts.
I tried using the most basic password I could think off which only consists of Upper and lower case letters and a few numbers. No special characters, and it still didn't work. I have no idea what my BIOS is doing with my keyboard mapping... :/
For the numbers, are you using the numeric keypad of your keyboard? If you have one, you should use it to avoid any mapping issues.
I have made a modification that will help us understand what is happening for you: I added the possibility in the bootloader to display/hide the typed characters by hitting F5. Thank to this, you can see the typed password in the BIOS. On Windows, use Notepad to type the same password using the same key combination in the keyboard after switching to US-keyboard layout.
Now, you can compare between the two displayed values. Please report back the results of your test.
I'm attaching the Windows installer to use. Thanks.
Thank you, that worked!
I took a look at the password I entered into the bootloader and it seems that it was a very weird bug with my BIOS I guess (found a workaround), the keyboard mapping itself was fine.
Thanks for that new version, you helped me so much :)
I'll donate you a few bucks next month, keep up the good work - Me and so many others really appreciate it :)
Happy to have been able to help!
I think I will keep this new F5 option in the next release so that others that make encounter the same issue can easily understand what's happening.
I'll also add the possibility to show the password during the creation of system encryption.