My son has found a way to get around the administrator password at the startup screen. Needless to say I don't want this happening. He starts out by booting into safe mode and then goes into the user accounts and then is able to delete the Admin profile. Shuts down and then reboots into normal Window mode with out the need for a password. I am not sure of the exact sequence of events that he preforms but I want to put an end to this. So my question is there a way to stop this type of occurrence? Any 2nd party password programs that can be downloaded or purchased. Thanks for any help that you can send my way. Joel

Did you try setting your BIOS with a supervisor password set for boot-up? Maybe your son does not know about that. Then he can't boot up your machine to even change the admin password. That assumes that he does not know how to reset the BIOS password.

If your son can get into Safe Mode with the ability to delete the Admin profile then there is a problem with the way Windows XP was configured when it was first installed. In Safe Mode he is using the Administrators account which is set up automatically during installation. It was probably set up with a blank password. This is different than the Administrator user account that is used when booting in normal mode which probably does have a password. The Administrators account is not available in normal mode. Stuart

Try going to Start>Run "control userpasswords2" without the quotes. You can put a password on the built in Administrator account there. If this account is password protected, you cannot boot into safe mode and change it without knowing what the password is. Give it a try and post back please.

Stuart and Terii are exactly right. Change the default Admin password and you won't have this happen again. Life is more painless for those who are brainless.

No, his son can still boot the Offline NT Password & Registry Editor to change the password. http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/