I worked for a company that is now out of business.  When they were closing, I bought one of the computers we had that was networked with a server.  I brought it home and used it, but my photos that I upload to another site were on another computer, so I haven't used it in quite some time.

When I went to boot it up to put it in service for another reason, it would not let me in, even with the password that I had used at the office when it was hooked to the server.

My question is, how do I get this computer to let me use it?  It is a Dell with a 10 gig hd (I think) with Windows XP Professional.

From what you have written, I assume the computer is booting into Windows and reaching a password screen.
Entering your old password does not work.
It would seem that, since this was a company computer, your previous password has expired. Unfortunately, you no longer have an administrator to assign a new one and enter it into the computer.
What you need now is either an administrative password or a way to find out what it is or to remove it.
The easy way would be to get the admin password, if you know who had it for your former company.
Failing that, you can try to remove the password. See the following web site.

http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/bootdisk.html

This page also has a link to other ways to recover a lost password.

The only other option I can see is to format the computer and reinstall the operating system. This would destroy all data on the hard drive and require a Windows installation disk with a valid code to enable you to register Windows.

Best of luck.

I can probably find someone who knows the admin password to the server.  I really didn't want to uninstall and reinstall the operating system.  I have a registerd copy of Office 2003 on that computer and would like to keep it without having to purchase it.  My other computer is supposed to have a valid registered copy, but the site won't let me update, so I was hoping to use the other computer.

I'll check out the web site you sent and see if that will help me.

Thanks for the reply.