XP Logon help stuck but hard to describe

[santuitman]

Hello All
I have an older Dell C610 laptop with XP pro on it and all the updates. Since SP3 it started asking for a logon again. I never had a password so I would just hit ok. The track pad had startted to act squirrely at the logon so I figured I would just bypass it but I couldn't remember how I had done it last time so I looked online and used the "Start>Run>Control Userpasswords2 and unticked User must enter a username and password to use this computer."
On restart is goes to a window that says loading preferences but never finishes. It will just sit there. I gave up after ~ 10 minutes. Any idea how to get back into the computer and what I may have done wrong? Needless to say I am at work trying to figurte this out so I can try to fix it when I get home.

Thanks in advance
Brian

 

[theAnimal]

Boot into safe mode.

 

[santuitman]

Yeah, I was wondering if I could use safe mode to get in. Then I can recheck the setting I changed but how can I get rid of the logon window?