Require a user password in Win XP Pro

[radarseven]

A while back, I made a registry change somewhere that required a user on my machine to have a password. I no longer need this and for the life of me can't remember or find where to change it back.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,
Michael R.

 

[BlameCanada]

What was the nature of the change ? Someone might know where to fix it.

gpedit.msc deals with policy changes and user limitations,

if that be any use.

 

[almcneil]

Don't know for sure but I would imagine it's the Administrator password. Go into User Accounts and deselect the password option.

Start -> Control Panel -> User Accounts

 

[radarseven]

Don't see it in gpedit.msc

It was an option I set months ago (I believe I edited via regedit) that required a a user to have a password. So, now if I go into Control Panel and try to remove the password on any accounts, I get the following error message:


"Windows cannot remove the password. Password and/or account policies require the account to have a password."

 

[BlameCanada]

This looks more hopeful. Run box - control userpasswords2

 

[radarseven]

@BlameCanada

Thanks for the reply.
I unchecked the box and did a restart. When I try remove the password from the Control Panel, I'm getting the same error message as above. Strange.

I'm also now getting some strange behavior at logon. Previously, I had two accounts that appear at logon, now only 1 of them appears?

 

[radarseven]

Update

Interesting update.

So I rechecked "Require a password" and did a restart and my other account that had a password attached to it now shows up again.

I review my policies at secpol.msc. Apparently I had implemented password requirements there previously, i.e. minimum length. I changed all of those to "0" and then I was able to remove a password from one of the accounts.

What's strange to me is that the "Password required" box is still checked under "userpasswords2". I guess I don't fully understand how that works. If a password is required, how I can have a user that doesn't have a password.?
Hmm