Let me paint you a mental picture. One of our employees is gazing with frustration at his computer screen, on which the contents of his Recycle Bin are displayed instead of the email login prompt he was expecting. In a fit of frustration, he comes to see me.

“Every time I open Groupwise I get my Recycle Bin.”

“Wow. That’s weird. Are you sure the icons aren’t on top of one another?” I’ll grant you that it’s unlikely, but it’s the first thing that comes to mind.

“Nope.”

“Have you tried clicking and dragging the Groupwise icon somewhere else on your screen to be sure?”

“Yep, I’ve done that.”

BZZZT! Wrong answer! There’s no way in hell the co-irker in question, technophobe that he is, would have tried that. Sorry, but when you try to make yourself look smart while I’m tossing out non-obvious solutions (my brain’s funny that way, I tend to think of the weirdest possible fix first, then the obvious stuff later), all you’re going to do is prove that you’re a dumbass.

So I trucked over to his desk. Sure enough, the Recycle Bin is open… and there’s a blinking taskbar item indicating that yes, indeed, Groupwise’s login prompt is awaiting input.

Here’s what happened: See, it turns out that Novell’s ZENworks has a quirk under XP and 2000. When you launch a ZEN icon, keyboard focus is then kicked back to the desktop. So when you don’t notice this, blindly type your password (and said password starts and ends with the letter ‘r’, as in ‘recycle bin’), then hit “enter” when you’re done… what do you suppose is going to open up?

Yeah. So now he knows what everyone else in the building knows, namely that you have to click on the login prompt before typing your password. Sheesh.