Cannot get past password to start- Help

[bm]

My neighbour has a new PC and her daughter installed the software including
a password.
I was asked to help her install the printer which I did and when I restarted
the PC the screen appeared asking for the Password.
My neighbour duly filled in the password but it was rejected.
After numerous attempts there was no success. I tried all sort of changes
such as capitals in place of lower case etc.
The odd thing is she successfully used her password before I appeared to
install the printer.
What I want to know is how do I get the window with the start menu so that I
can change the settings to have no password.?
Blair

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

My neighbour has a new PC and her daughter installed the software
including a password.
I was asked to help her install the printer which I did and when I
restarted the PC the screen appeared asking for the Password.
My neighbour duly filled in the password but it was rejected.
After numerous attempts there was no success. I tried all sort of changes
such as capitals in place of lower case etc.
The odd thing is she successfully used her password before I appeared to
install the printer.
What I want to know is how do I get the window with the start menu so that
I can change the settings to have no password.?
Blair

She is probably logging on under a different account than the
one she used to.

This is your opportunity to introduce some robust computing
habits, one of them being that every machine must have
a second admin account whose password is locked away in
a safe place. It's common sense - you have more than one
set of keys for your car, don't you?

If she cannot remember the account/password she used to
use then you can reset it by booting the machine with a
boot diskette from here:
http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/bootdisk.html

 

[Homer Jay]

If you are trying to login with a USER account and not the ADMIN account,
then you can reset the password.

Boot up in safe mode, and log in as the local administrator (this is
assuming they have not put a password on the admin account) then go to
Control Panel, Users and remove the users password. Reboot and login as
user, then re-assign a new password to the user.

 

[Jim]

My neighbour has a new PC and her daughter installed the software
including a password.
I was asked to help her install the printer which I did and when I
restarted the PC the screen appeared asking for the Password.
My neighbour duly filled in the password but it was rejected.
After numerous attempts there was no success. I tried all sort of changes
such as capitals in place of lower case etc.
The odd thing is she successfully used her password before I appeared to
install the printer.
What I want to know is how do I get the window with the start menu so that
I can change the settings to have no password.?
Blair

One other situation that can occur is that XP will lock an account after a
number (I can't remember the exact number) of
failed attempts at password validation. You must logon to an account which
is a member of the administrators group to
unlock the account. The other posters have told you how to get to the built
in administrator account.

Jim

 

[Lenny]

fdisk and format and reinstall

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

fdisk and format and reinstall

This is what an ignorant troll would say - ignorant
because he's stuck in a Win98 time warp where
fdisk still existed, troll because he recommends
cracking a peanut with a sledge hammer.

 

[bm]

Very many thanks to you Homer for your simplest suggestion. I carried it out
and was able to delete any reference to a password.which my neighbour now
wished as there is no need in her household to have this safeguard.
Regards
Blair

 

[Patrick Keenan]

Very many thanks to you Homer for your simplest suggestion. I carried it
out and was able to delete any reference to a password.which my neighbour
now wished as there is no need in her household to have this safeguard.
Regards
Blair

There is another reason to have passwords. The Windows Task Scheduler,
which is used by many apps such as backup and virus scan utilities, by
default, requires a password on the local account to actually run scheduled
tasks. You can defeat this behaviour, but it's there for a security
reason.

So you might want to check that the scheduled backups (there are backups,
yes?) and virus scans have actually been running.

HTH
-pk

 

[bm]

There is another reason to have passwords. The Windows Task Scheduler,
which is used by many apps such as backup and virus scan utilities, by
default, requires a password on the local account to actually run
scheduled tasks. You can defeat this behaviour, but it's there for a
security reason.

So you might want to check that the scheduled backups (there are backups,
yes?) and virus scans have actually been running.

HTH
-pk

I use Acronis TI for my backup and I use proprietary software for my Virus
scan with no requirement to use a password and I intend getting her to do
the same
Blair