Expert: Marvinator - 1/24/2008

Question
What follows may be proof that the difference between "wisdom" and "stupidity" is that there's a limit to wisdom....

BUT:  When I go to the eBay website, & get the “Welcome to eBay!” message, I’m given the choice to “Register” or “Sign In”.  Since this computer is used only by me, I’m comfortable with the “User ID” already being displayed.  Literally FOR YEARS I could then highlight the “User ID”, click it once with the left-arrow and then move my cursor onto the “Password” box, left-click it once and my password (in the form of round black circles) would appear in the Password space.  One click on “Sign In” and I was in business! (I guess that should be “bidness”).

Apparently, sometime between “Let there be light!” and the present I changed my password, but that action did not get conveyed to the electrons on the sign-in page, because now when I do the actions above I get a red-letter message “Your User ID or Password is incorrect”, with my User ID box still filled but the Password box now blank; bye-bye black dots.  

If I MANUALLY enter the password I’m “in like Flynn”, so the problem is not that I haven’t correctly established what my User ID and Password are; and it’s not that eBay’s Big Computer doesn’t know them, it’s like the Little Computer that is in charge of this “side door” entrance (without having to manually enter the password) hasn’t gotten the new marching orders.  

Since all I ever see displayed in the “Password” box are black dots I don’t know WHAT the incorrect password is, but that’s really beside the point.  

The question is:  How do I change the incorrect stored password—whatever it is—into the correct one?  Since I can manually enter User ID and Password and log on every time, there’s no reason to think that changing my password will help.  What needs to happen is that the “stored” password needs to be updated.

Can you help?


Answer
Stored Passwords are held by Internet Explorer's Auto Complete Function.  You can clear this function by clicking:
Tools - Internet Options and then clicking The CONTENT tab and then the AutoComplete Button.  Make sure there is a check mark in the box next to "User Names and Passwords on Forms" and then click the CLEAR PASSWORDS button.  
Close IE and then reopen.  Your name may appear on the page, but the password will need to be entered by hand one more time.  IE may also prompt you as to whether you want the password saved.  Either way, this should fix your incorrect password problem.