Well, it seems a couple of you caught me, almost. In my last article (on backing up) I referred to scheduling the backup which requires schedules tasks and a password. I just noted “If you don’t have one, look for my article on creating one and how to automatically logon without entering it every time.”

Well, I have not written a complete article on the subject. The needed information is actually in at least three different articles. One is on defragmenting and another on running disk clean and of course the Auto logon article. So I figure that I should write one article on just XP passwords.

You do need a Windows password to run the task scheduler. If you don’t have a password, you can easily create one.

To create a password in Windows XP
Click on “Start” and then choose “Control Panel”
Double-click on the “User Accounts” icon.
Select the proper account (that would be your user name) and double-click on it.
In the new window that appears select “Create a password”.
Fill in the blanks and click “Create Password” again.
Exit the windows.

Now, you have created a password for your account. If you are the only user of the computer, or you all share the same logon / desktop then maybe you don’t want to enter a password at every logon and every time the computers screen saver kicks in you can easily solve that.

First let’s deal with the screen saver password issue.

To disable (or enable if you want) the need to enter a password every time the screen saver comes on, right click a blank spot on the desktop and choose “Properties” from the little window that appears (it will be at the bottom of the list).

A new window will appear named “Display Properties”. Select the “Screen Saver” tab.

In about the middle of the window is a checkbox labeled “On resume display Welcome screen” which is what requires the password. Simply remove the checkbox. That is all there is to it.

Now, if you want to automatically log on to your computer without entering the password every time there are a few choices. Let’s face it, with Windows there is a least three ways to do everything. But for us we will refer back to the article “Stop that annoying Windows log-on” this saves us from needing to edit the registry by hand.

Well, that is all for now, until we meet again, have a virus free week!