XP Mode Login problem... Please Help!

[benebrady]

Ok, here's my problem. I've been XP Mode fine for about 6 months. Most of the work I do is programming in older environments, so XP Mode is a must.

I changed my main Windows 7 password and I also changed my XP Mode password to match. (At this point, I didn't know the stored credentials existed or where they were stored).

When starting the XP Mode, I would get an error indicating I could not be logged on with the password (that was apparently stored when the credentials were initially stored when I first installed XP Mode).

I COULD log in with the password manually. I decided to remove the password from the XPMUser account to see if I could log in without a password. (Boys and girls, DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!) Even though Control Panel in XP Mode has the capability of removing a password from the account, there is no warning that this will cause problems if you do.

At this point, when I try to log into XP Mode using XPMUser, and no password, I get a message saying I cannot be logged in due to account restrictions. I also cannot log in using the old password because the User Manager in Control Panel allowed me to remove the password from the account.

So my question is, is there any way I can log into the XPMUser account? Has anyone else done this?

 

[Kari]

Hi Benebrady, welcome to the Seven Forums.

If integration features are enabled in XP Mode or any other Virtual PC virtual machine, you need to have a password to log in. You simply can not use user accounts without a password.

To log in to an account with no password in XP Mode, you have to first disable the integration features. Read this post to see how, and this post to see how to enter XP Mode settings.

When you changed the password within XP Mode, the saved credentials do no longer match with the actual credentials. To see how to delete saved XP Mode credentials ant to save new ones, read this post.

Kari

 

[benebrady]

Thank you.

Hi Kari,

Thank you for the information. I was able to get the issue resolved by searching on the Microsoft web site. I turned off the integration feature, logged in, re-established my password, shut down the VM, cleared the saved logon credentials and then I was able to log in normally. Whew! I was sweating bullets for a day or so as I didn't have Internet service so I could research the problem. Thought I might have lost all of the source code that is stored in the VM.

Take care!