Sorry FED
Have never seen that. You don't have to enter a password to log in with mint on start up. But you do need a simple password for installing new software and similar alterations. There can be issues with some major-name laptops that have fast boot set in the bios so some settings need to be changed. If you can get the machine to boot from the dvd or dongle you get a good idea of how Mint works. A full installation (from the desktop icon) is best done with internet.
There's a lot of help online and any probs can normally be googled out. Like I said, I'm not a geek or even very techy and I hate going back to W7. Once Mint is up and running it's really worth the effort. Boots from cold in about 30secs (with SSD) and shuts down dead in about 5! Chrome users will see no difference when they use Chromium as their browser.