unknown error message at bootup

[Dave]

A computer someone asked me to fix has XP Home. It boots
up to the point right before the blue welcome screen and
pops up the following error message for a second and
reboots:

"When trying to update a password, this return status
indicates that the value provided as the current password
is not correct."

The computer gives the same error message when booting
into safe mode. It's not a blue screen error, just the
little gray windows popup error with the "ok" button.

I did not find the exact error in the Knowlege Base or
Google. It looks to me like something happened to the
Windows passwords data. Or is this some kind of Viral
activity? Anyone have an idea?

 

[Dave]

more research tells me it is the dreaded lsass.exe
error. I found several methods that might fix it beside
a clean install. Thanks for the help