Then, only the vpn provider would see the very same traffic, the ISP would see without vpn.

The ISP would just see your connection to the vpn provider.

The sites themselve would just see the vpn ip.

So it’s not the question about whether anyone sees the traffic, but who.

Only Tor would hide this traffic in a sense.

Yes, sorry for missunderstanding !

Ok, typing in the password but not seeing any characters (like * e.g.) is quite common. It prevents shoulder surfers from seeing the acual length of you password.

That means, that its still possible, that you keyboard is actually working there.

Are you using a layout different from US-ANSI ? Sometimes devices fall back to US layout during boot, which would lead to you typing in a “wrong” password, without noticing it. Especially special characters have different keys on different layouts. On german layout e.g. “y” and “z” are “swapped”.

Just partly related, and probably no help here - but about the fact, that you can’t type in that password (regardless whether you can remember it or not):

you probably use a bluetooth keyboard on that surface? Before boot is finished, bluetooth connection is not possible, so you need some sort of USB/serial keyboard to even type.

Had this issue when full disk encrypting a surface, because without usb (or the original serial) keyboard your stuck in the luks mount process during boot…