Hi everyone,sorry for the cryptic bug report. I identified my problem. When updating from KDE 3.1 to 3.2 the keyboard layout in the control center changed from Generic-105-key to Generic-104-key. After that I was not able to insert '<' or '>' or '|', unfortunately part of my old password. Switching back to the old layout naturally solved my problem. So feel free to close this bug or redirect it in any way.
Thank you for your time Thomas
