If you are using SSH, be careful not to type your username wrongly, because you will not have a chance to correct it after you press Return; many SSH servers do not permit you to make two login attempts using different usernames. If you type your username wrongly, you must close PuTTY and start again. If your password is refused but you are sure you have typed it correctly, check that Caps Lock is not enabled. Many login servers, particularly Unix computers, treat upper case and lower case as different when checking your password; so if Caps Lock is on, your password will probably be refused.
After you log in to the server, what happens next is up to the server! Most servers will print some sort of login message and then present a prompt, at which you can type commands which the server will carry out. Some servers will offer you on-line help; others might not. If you are in doubt about what to do next, consult your system administrator. When you have finished your session, you should log out by typing the server's own logout command. This might vary between servers; if in doubt, try logout or exit, or consult a manual or your system administrator. When the server processes your logout command, the PuTTY window should close itself automatically.
You can close a PuTTY session using the Close button in the window border, but this might confuse the server - a bit like hanging up a telephone unexpectedly in the middle of a conversation. We recommend you do not do this unless the server has stopped responding to you and you cannot close the window any other way. This chapter provides a general introduction to some more advanced features of PuTTY. For extreme detail and reference purposes, chapter 4
is likely to contain more information. A lot of PuTTY's complexity and features are in the configuration panel. Once you have worked your way through that and started a session, things should be reasonably simple after that. Nevertheless, there are a few more useful features available.