Windows Created Password For User Accounts

the closest we have found to our same problem is number on thread t350665..background one of our customers has run into a problem: they have been using XPhome for about a year, SP2 installed smoothly and has run well for a few months, they turned on automatic update, it installed, then next boot:problem it asked them for logon password where there was, previously, no (more specifically, blank) password. We tried booting into safe mode as admin, it also asked for a password where there was none. We have not found a default password, none of the defaults we knew for other microsoft products seem to work. The closest thing to a solution we have found is KB321305, but this article assumes they made a password disk (which they didn't, I think because they were not as suspicious of microsoft as I am), nor have admin priviledge, because the OS (or some updated part of it) seems to have forced a password on ALL accounts where they were all previously blank, so we can't even start in safe mode. They do not relish wiping their OS and starting over, and neither do I.