Hard drive dive

Still no laptop update. Hard drive was fried, then after GETTING a new hard drive, turns out the hard drive cable was also fried, so that had to get replaced (in the midst of all this debacle taking it back and forth between Apple and a different store because of reasons).

I got it back last night, reinstalled the OS and rebooted it with an external's Timemachine backup, but FOR WHYEVER when I got to the user login it was saying my password was incorrect and wouldn't let me log into the laptop. Even though I've used the same password for years. Even though the password is literally written on a notepad I keep on my desk next to me. Even though the password is written into the "password hint" box.

SO I tried changing the password - nothing. Tried reinstalling the OS with a new user account - nothing. I am in the process of wiping the hard drive and starting all over from scratch, installing the OS and setting up the laptop like it was brand new (without rebooting it from the Timemachine backup). I'll see if that helps at all, and I'll worry about putting all my info back later.

(Sorry for the tl;dr. Needed to get that out of my system before I threw my laptop out the window.)

I'm gonna go play Inquisition while this takes an hour to reinstall.