Passwords at log on and via remote desktop - Windows XP Pro

[Guest]

Today I couldn't log on to my laptop. Everytime I entered my password, I got
the question 'Have you forgotten your password?" NO! I hadn't forgotten, but
obviously the laptop had.

So I connected to my laptop via remote desktop using the same password and
get in no problem, removed the password, logged out and then logged in via
the laptop.

My questions are

1) why did my laptop forget my password via the log on screen?

2) how can I stop it from happening again?

Many thanks

 

[Steven L Umbach]

I have never seen a message "Have you forgotten your password" when a bad
password is entered. I only see "password is incorrect" which leads me to
believe something else is going on with your computer. At minimum you would
want to do full system scans for syware and malware using latest definitions
for any program used and also scan in safe mode. It would also be
interesting to logon in the security logs via Event Viewer to see what, if
any failed logons were recorded when you attempted to logon and the reason
why. --- Steve