With Vista Ultimate or Business - sorry, not sure about Vista Home Premium:

1. Start, Administrative Tools, right click Local Security Policy, select
Run as Administrator
2. click Continue (or key administrative credentials if you are not logged
on with an administrative user account)
3. navigate to Security Settings, Account Policies
4. click Password Properties

The setting you want is in the right pane "Minimum password length". You
may also need to set "Password must meet complexity requirements" to
Disabled.

Why the settings are different between the two new computers is a mystery to
me - maybe some OEM changed them for some reason.

From what I can see, the defaults for these settings are:
"Minimum password length" - 0
"Password must meet complexity requirements" - Disabled

"Local Security Policy" appears to be missing from Vista Home Basic.

--
Bruce Sanderson MVP Printing
http://members.shaw.ca/bsanders

It is perfectly useless to know the right answer to the wrong question.



"JWambo" <JWambo@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:7D259844-738B-4BB9-812E-7BA7FA370436@microsoft.com...
>I just bought 2 computers, both with Windows Vista Home Premium. I've been
>an
> AOL user for many, many years. Long before more complex passwords were
> required. My password is 4 characters long. I can sign in on one computer
> using this 4 character password but on the other, I keep getting the pop
> up
> that says passwords must be at least 6 characters long. This prevents me
> from
> setting up my AOL account on this computer. I've searched and searched for
> a
> way to fix this. I can't find the password policy area in this version of
> vista. I need to know whar to do.