ComputerBB

Hello, I was just wondering if this is normal, or just something that happens that I can turn off: I recently bought Windows XP professional a couple months back. Anyway, until now, I've had very little difficulty with it. Within the last week or so though, I have had a couple minor issues with logging onto my system. A couple of times, my system has said to me after rebooting my computer that I have (this amount) of days and the computer needs my logon password. It basically shows the old classic looking logon screen. (the box with user name and password) Problem is, I have only one user account on this computer, and I am very sure that I didn't specify a password. I am also pretty sure that I entered as many different passwords that I could think of just in case I did set a password...and I also left the password bar blank. It said all were invalid. So anyway...this screen hasn't popped up in a few days, and I also used an iso to recover my PW, and it confirmed that I didn't have a password in the first place...And it's also odd to me that this logon screen hasn't popped up since...But now something else odd happens...Before breezing through and going to my desktop like it usually does, my computer stops at the welcome screen...and just sits there...Since I only have one user, there isn't anything to do there...And there's also a beep right before it does this, though I am not sure if that is important. What's weird is the welcome screen will not change, and it doesn't look like it is loading anything...(it has already loaded already it seems) until I press control,alt,del once and suddenly my desktop pops up. So anyway, is this a common problem? What could be causing this, and what can I do?

you probably have a virus download, install, and update avg anti virus

Nope, I also have a fully updated version of norton on my computer and have scanned within the last twenty four hours. That was one of the first things I checked. I haven't downloaded anything within the last two months that would give me a virus, I use firefox as a browser, have a popup blocker, and always keep my auto-protect on. If there is a virus, it isn't listed by norton.