XP user passwords

You should make your password as strong as possible and use a range of capitals and lower case. numbers etc. This will make it harder to guess.

No, if you have a network, the password is different.

I mean from an attacker on the internet, will the password you use for your local accounts on an xp machine protect you? I hope that's not a dumb question.

Are you asking about protection from online threats??

Yes, I'm talking about whether my XP password affects my vulnerability from hackers on the internet.

Say a hacker is targeting my machine and I have no services that are exploitable running. Is my XP password the next weakest link?

I don't mean someone physically there trying to guess the password at the prompt.

Your logon password has nothing to do if a hacker can access your system. If you have no firewall, virus protection etc. it is in fact very easy to access your system if they know what they are doing.

Yep, that's what was eluding me; login password.

Since we are on the topic of user passwords.... Its always best to make strong passwords with any account (Windows accounts, email accounts, banking accounts, etc)

The following article I picked up is an excellent read-> http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/privacy/password.mspx