TV Forum: New for (the middle of) 2020

Then that implies there is something on the new laptop interfering with it. This may be software, it may be an Edge add-in...

Sudden thought: If you're not careful Windows 10 can default to a US keyboard. If your password was to include a " or a @, those are swapped on a US keyboard compared to a UK keyboard. So Shift+2 would generate an @ symbol, and shift+' is the speech quote. There are a handful of other differences, here:
https://blogs.transparent.com/english/differences-between-the-us-and-uk-computer-keyboard/

My new laptop did come with Mcafee preinstalled and I accidentally hovered over it and clicked on it which activated a free trial, would Mcafee prevent me logging in? I haven’t been kicked out of the forums on my iPad for attempting to log in on a browser.

Uninstall it and see, you can always add another later. Some anti-virus packages do include "phishing protection" or other browser based add-ons, and a lot of browser add-ons just cause more issues than they claim to fix. Google Toolbar when it was a thing (and when IE was king of the browsers) was good at doing this, promised the earth in terms of features and yet was the number one cause of browser issues.

Also as I say check your keyboard settings if you are using a ", @ or anything listed on the previous link as part of your password.

The keyboard when pressing shift & 2 brings up the inverted comma symbol. I can log in to other pages fine except TVF.

Have you tried pasting your password in? Either from a keychain/password manager, or just from a plain text field.

Not sure what to suggest, I've just logged in fine on Edge (Chromium flavour). Copy/paste the password in might help. If you're using any special characters I guess there's the possibility Edge is mangling it in transit but seems unlikely. A last resort would be changing your password.

The only other option to suggest is sticking another web browser (Firefox, Chrome, Opera, whatever you like) on the laptop and seeing if you can get in with that. If it works fine on another browser on the same unit then that narrows it down to an Edge issue. However if it doesn't work on any browser that suggests there's a wider issue.

If it was a password issue with your account on TV Forum then logic dictates that you wouldn't be able to get in on the iPad you're on either.

The actual wording I get on Edge is:

“Wrong username or password. Alternatively, your account may not have been activated yet. Check your emails for information on how to activate”

I bought a laptop last year with a trial of McAfee preinstalled, and the constant "in X days you'll be unprotected!" nag screens and ads were more of a pain than a virus would have been. As long as you're sensible with the things you open, Microsoft's own virus/malware protection is good enough in the vast majority of cases, and isn't spammy/naggy.

Windows Defender as you say is as good as any paid-for protection software these days. It never used to be, but finally Microsoft got their act together.

McAfee was pre-instaled in my current PC. I deleted it straight away and installed Kaspersky instead, but now use Windows Defender.

Not sure this is really as true as it was seeing as Edge basically is Chrome now.

But if you're like me and have always disliked any flavour of Chrome and prefer Firefox then it still stands!

Edge is not Chrome. It is based on Chromium. Not quite the same thing. Google Chrome is also based on Chromium but has extra bells and whistles, ie having just enough to make it unique enough from Chromium. Edge may be similar.

Still everybody's free to use what they like browser wise, though Firefox's market share has been on a downward trend. Google are pretty much on top for everything, browser and operating system share (across all platforms as a whole, Android is apparently more prolific than Windows). Chrome OS however, no real impact on the desktop market, Windows rules the roost there.