dad's spare computer hasn't been used for a few months. Now when I turn it on I get a login message "your password has expired and must be changed". We only ever use one password for everything we do, but when we enter it it says it or the username is wrong & windows wont open. I booted from the disk, clicked repair, went thru the intall process & still get the same message. Any sugestions would be greatly appreciated!

Try just pressing enter for both username & password (blank fields) ....

barney: No XP Password Expiration if your XP standalone workstation has passwords enabled, by default, XP is set up with passwords which will expire after 42 days. 14 days in advance of expiring, Windows will start asking if you want to change the password. Want an unchanging password? then; click Start click Control Panel click Administrative Tools double-click Computer Management double-click Users and Groups click Users in the right panel, right click your account and select Properties select Password Never Expires checkbox