Logging on at boot up

[Morania]

My neighbor boots his laptop and the log-on window comes up now. You know the one with the choice of profiles? He said it never used to. I'm embarrassed to tell him that I don't know how to tell XP to open in a default profile each time. How do I do that?

[Curio]

There are ways and ways. I usually do it using regedit.
Navigate to "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\Winlogon"
add these values if they don't exist
DefaultUserName="THEIR_USER_NAME"
DefaultPassword="THEIR_PASSWORD"
AutoAdminLogon="1"
all are string values.

This is a more graphical way

1. Select Run from the Start menu.
2. Enter

control userpasswords2

and click OK.
3. Select the Users tab.
4. Uncheck the "Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer."
5. Click OK.
6. When the system prompts you, enter a username and password for users who automatically log on, and click OK.