If you have an HP laptop with a finger print reader and Windows 7, you may have experienced the following error when logging in:

“The Stub Received Bad Data”

If so, there are a couple of work-arounds for this.

• Turn on your laptop and continually tap the F8 key until a selection menu appears. Select “Safe Mode” or “Safe Mode With Networking”. Enter your password to login like normal. Choose Start > Control Panel > System and Security > Administrative Tools > Services, Find “Authentication Service” from Digital Persona, right click it and choose properties. Change the startup type to “Disabled” and hit OK. Restart and boot like normal, you should be able to login with your password. The finger print scanner will be disabled however. If you want to continue to use it, try the following:

• While in Safe Mode, go to Add/Remove programs from the control panel and uninstall “HP Simple Pass Software”, then reboot like normal. You should be able to login with your password like normal. You can then search HP's website for an older version of the software, or if you still have the CD that came with the laptop, you can install it from there. If this still doesn't work, you can try one last thing:

• While in Safe Mode, click on the start button and type “System Restore” in the search box and click on it. Follow through with the prompts and restore your system settings to a state before the problem occurred. Reboot and login like normal. This will resolve the problem temporarily, until HP decides to update the software again. To disable HP updates, open the HP Support Assistant and choose, “Check for updates but let me choose when to install them”.

Hopefully these tips will get you back on track.