WindowsXP Local Policy

[Jim]

I think someone changed some settings on my son's laptop
at college, he has WindowsXP home edition and he have
never used a password to logon to windows. Now it is
asking for a password when it boots into windows. I
tried all of the trouble shooting such as leaving it
blank, safe mode, I even made a boot disk to change the
password. Nothing has worked. After entering the
window's password an error screen comes up saying "the
local policy of this system does not permit you to logon
interactively".
Can anyone explain what I need to do to correct the
problem? I tried to use Partition Magic to create
another partition so I could install WindowXP Pro but it
would not let me resize the partition. Not being able to
start windows is a problem plus I think I need
Administrator rights to do this. Is there any way to
change back the local policy to permit you to logon?
Thanks, any help would be appreciated.

 

[Plato]

I think someone changed some settings on my son's laptop
at college, he has WindowsXP home edition and he have
never used a password to logon to windows. Now it is
asking for a password when it boots into windows. I

This password thing is way too much of hassle for home users. It's one
thing I believe MS should have left out of the "NT" home version.

 

[Alex Nichol]

I think someone changed some settings on my son's laptop
at college, he has WindowsXP home edition and he have
never used a password to logon to windows. Now it is
asking for a password when it boots into windows. I
tried all of the trouble shooting such as leaving it
blank, safe mode, I even made a boot disk to change the
password.

See if you can get in at a safe mode boot by selecting the reserve
Administrator that should then appear as an icon, and leaving the
password blank (which is the default in Home). If the icon does not
appear at Welcome, hit CTL ALT DEL twice and enter the explicit name
Administrator.

If that can get in, then start - run the line
control userpasswords2
where you can select any user and reset password

The controls that prevent logon ought not to be present in XP Home, so
the trouble may be that there is damage to one of the files that handles
access control at logon (possibly the lsass.exe one). In such a case
the best course of action is probably a repair reinstallation of the
system, if he has a proper CD of XP rather than some 'restore' to
ex-factory state