A funny thing happened tonight -

I have mostly been using Outlook and not even thinking about doing anything "techy". I decide on a break and put the laptop (HPG62) into "hibernate" while I went to make a cuppa.

When I come back - ALL (so far as I have checked but it looks like all) of the forums and the like in which I participate want me TO RE-ENTER MY USER NAME AND PASSWORD.

This happened to Wiki amongst all the others

Anyone any clues why that should have happened?

Snod, feeling miffed

The forum software pings your computer every now and then to check you are still there, when you were in hibernate your computer didn't respond and the forum has logged you out.

No, no - this has happened to EVERY forum of which I am a member. Some of those I have not visited for yonks and they have never defaulted before. Also - I NEVER log out of Wiki and sometimes just leave that as an active page for hours and hours while I browse on other pages.

So, no, that is not the reason

Snod

Are you on Win7? This happens to me sometimes, like when I forget to plug in the laptop power and leave it, and it auto-hibernates; when I wake it back up, Facebook, Wiki, Google Mail, etc then all make me log back in again, although I have "keep me logged in" set wherever I can. I think it may be loss of Cookies, maybe due to some kind of failure to close open files upon Hibernating? Not much you can do about it when / if it happens, except dutifuly log back in...

If its not the ping it must be the cookies have been deleted/cleaned up for some reason. The wonderful world of Windows

The forms dont ping.
There is an expire on cookies I think its set to 30 days.

I would think your history or cookies or both have been deleted.

Try a system rrestore to the previous day.
Sometimes there isnt an answer.

Yes, maybe "just one of those MS things" for which there will never be an explanation. My worry was in case there had been some sort of rogue program downloaded accidentally and which had been seeking my personal information. I do have antivirus (Avira) and Adaware in operation and have never had any problems over a decade.

OS is win 7. I do not have a battery in the laptop. It will run fine from mains with no battery installed (and has done for a year). I just put the battery in every couple of months or when I need to go mobile, make sure it goes through a few complete charge/ discharge cyles then when fully charged take it out and put it back into storage. Past experience is that a battery kept in a machine that is 98% used on mains will quite soon end up with a knackered battery.

Snod