Passwords complexity on windows xp home

Clarifications

1) Click on [b]Start [/b]
2) Click on [b]Control Panel [/b]
3) Click on [b]Administrative Tools [/b]
4) Click on [b]Local Security Policy [/b]
5) Click on the [b]plus-sign[/b] in the left pane to open Account Policies
6) Click on [b]Password Policy [/b]
7) Select [b]Disabled [/b]
8) Click on [b]OK [/b]

I was under the impression that there are no password complexity requirements or settings for XP Home Edition.

Home is lacking a lot of networking functionality. Since complex passwords is generally a networking thing, I just assumed Home didn't have that option.

If it is adjustable it is probably done within the registry. If there is a way to do it, I don't know it.....

About when or where its happen I can not give you a clear answer this is not my machine, I can tell you that it start about month ago. I tried to access as admin and was successful under safe mode when I tried to chage the passwords for the user and for the admin I got on both the same message. "password does not meet complexity requirements" When I change the password to be the following it worked. 12345678eE!
This is a stand alone laptop there is no conntection to any LAN network. no special application or file access. msconfig and startup folder look nomal I clean the startup folder and went into the regedit and clean all run hives on user and the machine.
I reinstall this laptop from OEM CD 10 months ago Fresh clean installtion of windows xp home SP2, the user did not install much and told me that he did nothing expet downloading music from itune, he thought he forgot his password but I guess he didnt. this is all the information I have please let me know what else you need. Thank you for your time

I suppose that it's theoretically possible that an XP Pro patch was applied, but, given the the underlying process(es) required for the enforcement of complex passwords, I'd expect the install of the patch to fail, or a crash soon afterwards.

Furthermore, he insists that he recently did a clean install of SP2; what I'd like to know is who the "OEM" is. If elinoy is the OEM, based on past experience with other box builders, there's a good chance that he's the cause of this problem.

What's even more puzzling is the claim the the user's password, one [u]already established[/u], was rejected. This makes no sense, as the complexity requirement is enforced only when new passwords are created; if the policy is changed from simple to complex passwords, users with previously set simple passwords are not summarily locked out.

Something about this just doesn't smell right. A 3rd party add-on, perhaps? There are any number of them floating around for XP Home, that attempt to give it some of the security features available only on XP Pro.

I did the xp installation on this Dell laptop. The guy took it to the university here and after a month or so he start having this problem.
Can you control XP home security via a domain server ? I'm not 100% sure on it.
I Suppuse to get this laptop here in few days then I will be able to upload anything you would like to see.

I thought about 3rd party software but I google that and could not find even one that is changing password to complex.

The disk that I use to do the install is a microsoft windows XP Home CD it is not the dell image CD that came with the laptop.
but like I state before it work fine and the user did not have any problem with password.
I know someone play with this laptop becuase the password for the administrator account was changed, when I do a clean install I use my password and when I tried to use my password on the admin account it did not work for me the password was blank. so something very wired happened.

I will keep you update on this Thanks for your help guys.

Do you know of any 3rd party software that can do it ?

What I said was that it is definitely [b]not[/b] included in an install from either MS or Dell; ergo, someone who [u]used[/u] the machine caused this problem.