Administrator Password?

[FrankSG]

I have Windows XP Home edition. It's my home computer and I'm the only one who uses it. Usually it boots up just fine. Yesterday, I made a change to the way it boots, but then when I restarted, it asked me to type the Administrator Password. I've never used a password and have no idea what it might be. What I had to do was to shut it down, restart it in Safe Mode and then undo the change that I made. It's fine now, but my question is: Is there really a password somewhere? If so, how do I find out what it is? Since I'm the only one who uses it, (My grandchildren use it once in awhile, but I'm not worried that they may see something that I don't want them to see.) I'd like to completely disable the requirement for a password.
~Frank~

[Paul Komski]

There are two startup screens, classic and welcome. Sounds like you reverted to classic for a while. You can of course have a blank password - if that is what you desire.

Basically you want to set an automatic logon and there are a couple of approaches.

There is this method:-
Click START
Click RUN
Type control userpasswords2
Click on your username, so its highlighted
Untick "Users must enter a user name and password"
Click OK
Enter the password you want
Confirm the password
Click OK

Or else get TweakUI for XP http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/downloads/powertoys.asp and open the logon section.

[FrankSG]

Thanks, Paul--that worked! When I first tried it, I couldn't get it to working because it still kept asking me for a password. So I just gave up on it for awhile. This morning I decided to try it again to see what I was doing wrong. Well--the bottom line is that what I did different this morning is when I ran "control userpasswords2", when it asked me to enter a password, I just left it blank. That did the trick. Thanks again.

[YODA74]

Also another way of doing it..

#1]. restart the computer

#2]. Hit F8 as soon as your bios has completed posting

#3]. Use your arrow keys to scroll up to Safe Mode (with or without networking doesn’t matter for this unless you have to access a website while in safe mode)

#4]. Wait for it to boot and if you have a welcome screen you should see the username administrator now click it and
OR
if you have a login window open clear out the current username and type in administrator don’t enter a password and hit enter to continue

and you should be able to log in unless an administrative password has been set which you will find in most cases it hasn’t.

I know this is really simple but for those who don’t know how to change BIOS’s to use boot disks or how to get a copy of a bootable cds with tons of password crackers and brute forcers then this is a really easy way to accomplish admin access