On many XP installations any attempt to start the Recovery Console will fail because no password will be accepted. Even if a password has never been set simply hitting Enter will not work.
The following Regedit will stop the Recovery Console prompting for a password. Note that the Regedit must be done before access to the Recovery Console is required i.e. when your system is error free.
Please take all the usual precautions when editing your registry:
Start > Run > Regedit
Navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Setup\RecoveryConsole
Set the DWORD SecurityLevel value to 1
Exit Registry and Reboot
