Can't remember your Windows XP administrator password?

You can follow Microsoft instruction. But if you don't have a "password reset disk" you have to follow this method:

1. With your Windows XP CD in the cd-rom drive and boot your computer

2. Press any key when you read "Press any key to boot from cd" on the screen

3. The first screen will indicate that Setup is inspecting the system hardware and loading files

4. When you get to the Welcome screen, press ENTER to Setup Windows now

5. Press F8 to accept the Licensing Agreement

6. The next screen gives you the option to start a Repair process. Use the arrow keys to select your XP installation (if you only have one, it should already be selected) and press R to begin the Repair process

7. Setup will now check your disks and then start copying files which can take several minutes. Shortly after this stage you will be required to reboot

8. During the reboot do not press any key to boot from the CD again. Setup will resume automatically with the standard screen

10. Keep your eye on the lower left hand side of the screen. When you see the Installing Devices progress bar, press SHIFT + F10. A command console will now open up giving you a wide access to the system

11. At the prompt, type NUSRMGR.CPL and press Enter. You have gained graphical access to your User Accounts in the Control Panel

12. Now remove or change your password as you prefer. Once the Repair is done, you will be able to log on with your new password. Your programs and personalized settings should remain intact.

Now that your logon problem is fixed, you should prevent this problem from happening again by creating a Password Reset Disk. This is a floppy disk you can use in the event you forget your password. It allows you to set a new password.

See here for step by step instruction

The first Windows OS started to be developed in September 1981 and it was sold in stores on November 1985 under the name Windows 1.0.

Bill Gates wanted to call Windows 1.0 "Interface Manager" but Rowland Hanson (marketing expert) persuaded him that Windows was a better name. Microsoft sent out a press kit featuring a squeegee and washcloth to announce the launch of Windows 1.0. The press kit was sent out in November 1983, a full two years before the operating system was eventually released.
After taking a look at a very early pre-release version of Windows in 1983, Byte Magazine declared it a system that would "offer remarkable openness, reconfigurability, and transportability as well as modest hardware requirements and pricing." The system requirements for Windows 1.0 were 256KB of RAM, DOS 2.0 and two floppy drives. The retail price for Windows 1.0 was $100. Adjusted for inflation, that's equivalent to $177 in today's dollars.

Windows 1.0 was out for only about two weeks before Microsoft released version 1.01, in order to fix several bugs. This was the beginning of a long tradition of service packs and other incremental fixes that continues to this day.
From the beginning, Windows could display color, if hooked up to a color monitor with an appropriate graphics adapter, while Macs available at the time were strictly black and white affairs. This led PC Magazine to declare that "after an hour In-a-vision (the first of the native applications to be offered for Windows), even the most devoted Macintosh user will be a convert."

Windows 1.0 used a primitive file manager called MS-DOS Executive. A later version of this program, which is largely unchanged from the original, is available for download, and still runs under Windows XP !

Despite the limitations of the bundled apps, early ads for Windows boasted that the system included "an extremely useful set of applications."

In an unprecedented move Microsoft has promised to provide support services for its soon-to-be-retired Windows XP until 2014 because too many of its key business users are still running the ageing OS.

In a letter sent to customers this week, Microsoft senior VP Bill Veghte said the software maker will provide security patches "and other critical updates" for Windows XP until April, 2014 (a full 13 years after the operating system was originally released): "Our ongoing support for Windows XP is the result of our recognition that people keep their Windows-based PCs for many years," Veghte wrote.

That may be, but Microsoft normally terminates support for an OS within ten years of its release — at the latest. For instance, it plans to end support for Windows 2000 in 2010. Microsoft may have little choice but to support Windows XP for an extended period, given that the majority of its large business customers have not upgraded their personal computers and laptops to the newer, Windows Vista operating system.

Many companies have balked at Vista's cost, resource requirements, and lack of compatibility with older applications.

Microsoft released Vista in January of last year. But the company has apparently accepted the fact that many of its largest customers will skip Vista altogether and will continue using XP at least until Windows 7 becomes available three years from now, and possibly longer.

In addition to supporting XP through 2014, Microsoft is now actively promoting a program that allows customers to downgrade Vista systems to XP through a loophole in the company's licensing terms. Microsoft's software license allows customers who purchase a copy of Windows to install and run a previous version of the OS at no additional cost.

The upgrade provides support for WPA2 and the Peer Name Resolution Protocol (PNRP) used in Windows Vista, among other things. The public version will be available for download via the Web on April 29. Based on our initial installation, the upgrade will be effortless for most Windows XP users.

The last Service Pack for Windows XP, SP2, was released in August 2004. The initial release took some users all night to download and install. The company pushed back the initial public release from June 2004 originally. Despite numerous glitches still present in the code, Windows XP SP2 was formally made public on August 20, 2004, and Microsoft had to work hard to convince users to upgrade.

Windows XP SP2 featured a new Security Center, an improved firewall, and other tweaks.

Microsoft says the service pack includes functionality previously released as updates. XP SP3 should take only 30 minutes to download, and 10 minutes to install.

Some updates relevant to the home user include:

• Support for WPA2, the latest standards-based wireless security solution derived from the IEEE 802.11i standard.
• Improvements to black-hole router detection (detecting routers that are silently discarding packets). Windows XP SP3 turns this protection on by default.
• BITS 2.5, which is required by Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 and Windows Live OneCare.
• Peer Name Resolution Protocol (PNRP), which allows Windows XP applications to communicate with Windows Vista programs that use PNRP.
• Windows Installer 3.1, which contains new and enhanced functionality and addresses some issues that Microsoft found in Windows Installer 3.0.
• Digital Identity Management Service (DIMS), which allows users who log on to any domain-joined computer to silently access all of their certificates and private keys for applications and services.
• MMC 3.0, which is a framework that provides common navigation, menus, toolbars, and workflow across diverse tools.
• MSXML6, which provides better reliability, security, and conformance with the XML 1.0 and XML Schema 1.0 W3C Recommendations as well as System.Xml 2.0.
• IPsec filter creation and maintenance. XP SP3 reduces the number of filters that are required for a server and domain isolation deployment. Also, the Simple Policy Update removes the requirement for explicit network infrastructure permit filters and introduces enhanced fallback to clear behavior.
• The Security Options control panel includes more descriptive text to explain settings and prevent incorrect settings configuration.
• Network Access Protection (NAP), which is a policy enforcement platform built into Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, and Windows XP SP3 to better protect network assets by enforcing compliance with system health requirements.

After months of speculation, rumor, and silence from Microsoft, the company is finally talking publicly about Service Pack 1 for Vista. Microsoft's Pete McKiernan, a senior product manager for Windows, told News.com that one of the purposes of a service pack is to include all the patches that have been released in one package.
This means that unlike Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista SP1 won't include any "must have" new things or other features to encourage people to move to Vista.

What is included in the "upgrade"?

Security enhancements: There is nothing here that the desktop consumer will notice: Microsoft will provide more opportunities for third-party security vendors to communicate their product status with the Windows Security Center.

Reliability enhancements: Microsoft has been analyzing crashes of Windows Vista reported by users and will be making improvements. In particular, more compatibility with newer graphics cards and printers; greater reliability with extended displays on a laptop, various networking scenarios, in systems that were upgraded from Windows XP, and when Windows Vista enters sleep or resumes from sleep.

Performance enhancements: Microsoft says SP1 will offer performance boosts including the speed to copy and extract files, time to become active from Hibernate and Resume, CPU utilization within Internet Explorer 7 and CPU utilization in laptops, thereby reducing battery drain, and shortening the time when browsing network shares.

None of these is a compelling reason to wait for Windows Vista SP1. Users who have automatic updates turned on will have a significantly shorter time when upgrading to Windows Vista SP1 than users who don't have it turned on or are planning to upgrade or purchase Windows Vista when SP1 becomes available.

While on a visit in Romania, where Bill Gates participated in the celebration of 10 years since the Microsoft branch has been running there, and the launch of Vista, declared that, with the right amount of administration, the new Vista could run life support systems in hospitals. Here is a fragment from the interview:

Journalist: Let’s imagine a hospital where life support systems are running Vista. Would you trust it with your life?

Bill Gates: Security has been the top priority for Microsoft for quite some time and that’s why I put out a key call for us to focus on that in a very big way over three years ago, and that’s why we’ve made investments like having people from Gecad ( Romanian company ) join on the security action from Microsoft. The answer to your question is that, absolutely, Vista is the most secure operating system we’ve ever done, and if it’s administered properly, absolutely, it can be used to run a hospital or any kind of mission critical thing. But it’s not as simple as saying “If you use Vista, that happens automatically”. The issues about patient records and who should be able to see them, the issue about setting up a network, so that authorized people can connect up to that hospital network, the issue about having backup power, so that the computer systems can run even if the generators go down. There are a lot of issues to properly set up that system, so that you have the redundancy and the security walls to make sure it fulfils that very critical function. So we are working with partners to raise their skills to make sure that when get involved in an installation like that they can make it secure. So I feel better about Vista than any other operating system, but there’s a lot of things that need to be done well, and we’re certainly committed to step up and make sure these security issues are easier and better understood.

Using Vista to run life support systems would give a new meaning to the "Blue Screen of Death"..

What happens if you don't activate Windows XP?

After 30 days without activation you can't access your files, or doing anything else because Windows refuses to let you login anymore. You can only try to activate Windows.

Unfortunately, if you try to log on in Safe Mode after activation has expired, you are informed that activation is required, that activation can not be performed in Safe Mode, and to log in under normal Windows and activate that way.

The following is a solution to gain access to your files on an expired Windows, with even enough functionality to surf the web, talk on MSN Messenger, and run most of your applications.
It doesn't give you full functionality of Windows, but it will be enough to get the job done until you can find the time to activate your Windows.

First, turn on your computer and wait until you get to the Windows login screen.

Next, click to login as usual. You should get an error from Windows telling you that your Windows has expired and is asking whether you would like to activate Windows now. Click Yes.

A "Let's activate Windows" window will appear. Minimize it. DO NOT close it.

Now, hold down the Windows Key on your keyboard while you also press the "U" key. This will open up the Narrator program to help assist those with poor vision.

Click the little computer icon in the top left hand side of the Narrator window. A drop down menu should appear. The last option in this menu is named "About Narrator…". Click it. This should open up another window called "About Narrator".

In this window, there should be the text "Microsoft Web site". Click it, as it is a link and will open up your Internet Explorer, taking you to the Microsoft Accessibility website and giving you Internet access.

In the address bar of Internet Explorer, type "c:\" (without quotes). This will display all your hard drive contents on drive "C". From there you can load navigate your way around your computer, running specific programs and whatever else.

You should find your personal files and programs in this directories:

C:\documents and settings\(your username)\Desktop\
C:\documents and settings\(your username)\Documents\
C:\documents and settings\(your username)\Start Menu\Programs\
C:\program files\

In Windows Vista there is an easier way: if the system won't let you log on because your key is expired, simply choose, "Activate with a new key from Microsoft". That will launch a web browser. Then type in c:\windows\explorer.exe and hit enter. Windows will fully load up and you will get the task bar, desktop, everything. Just don't close the activation window, or else the system will reboot.

After a week of deep testing, Computer Reseller News testers have found that Windows Vista is only marginally more secure than its predecessor Windows XP. The review said that Vista is 'riddled with holes', despite its much touted multilayer security architecture and embedded security tools.

It provided no improvement in virus protection. Vista brings little or no security gains over its predecessor against such threats as RDS exploits, script exploits, image exploits, VML exploits, malformed Web pages and known malicious URLs, the Test Centre found. Both failed to detect two worms and a virus.

While Vista's Windows Defender, which is designed to detect various malware, gave the new OS a slight edge over XP when detecting spyware and adware sites.

Vista blocked a trojan executable called Backdoor.Win32.Hupigon.emb but missed named Trojan-Spy.Win32.Goldun.ms and detected in September 2006, months before Vista's release.

Vista with IE 7 detected a bad remote data services ActiveX control from only one out of five PHP-based Web sites. Both failed to block spoofed content and vector-based images that had embedded scripts.

The review said that businesses that migrate their Windows PCs from XP to Vista will get a slightly more secure OS but one which is still 'wafer thin'.