My X-series Thinkpad won't let me log in after a long while turned off (a few months without ever powering on). It boots up but it does not accept my password. Also, it dies immediately whenever unplugged, whereas it used to have decent battery life. This is probably my fault as I think I left it plugged in for a long while when it was off, which must have drained the battery life. Now that that has happened, the fingerprint scanner is disabled because I think it automatically does that when the charge is too low or something and you have to log in to turn it back on. As I said, I cannot log on. I am pretty sure I am using the correct password but I fear the password may have been corrupted by viruses. I have had problems with malware on this machine before; I do not believe I had lost any data previously, but they had not been weak or tame viruses; at least, I had to be in Safe Mode to get rid of them, and they had created some registry keys, so they were stronger than any viruses I had encountered before. I thought I got rid of them all with my anti-malware programs but I guess not. Stupidly, there is only one login account (which is also the admin account) because I deleted the others as my HD was running out of space. I am not computer-savvy so I don't have any idea how to fix my laptop situation. I have a new laptop already, but I would like to transfer many of my files from the old laptop to the new. First of all, I don't want my new laptop to get infected; I don't know if transferring files like word docs and music can infect a different computer except in serious cases, but I'd rather not take chances. Second, I would like to regain control of this laptop so I can gift it to my younger brother. The laptop runs Windows Vista, FYI. Please help me if you can.
