1. I use song lyrics, taking the first letter of each word of the line and changing letters to other characters I consider similar. I normally make the first or last character a capital.

eg. "They say in heaven love comes first" becomes T$!hlcf
and "I need some loving like I never needed love before" becomes !n$ll!nnlB

Ok, so this isn't actually helping you but I find it's a good way to make long, hard passwords that are still really easy to remember. Much better than taking your pet's/child's/partner's name and putting a 1 on the end. :)

Re: 2 I'd flag hacking it, assume you have to reinstall. You've got everything backed up elsewhere, so go for it (says he who hasn't backed up anything in about a year :)

Personally (assuming you have one hard disk with one partition currently) I'd use a boot up from a CD or floppy and set up a second partition on your hard disk. Copy files you need via DOS to the new partition, then wipe the first one and reinstall XP on to it.

That's the super quick assuming-you-know-lots suggestion. If you want to ask more about that, I'm happy to explain, but if none of that makes any sense to you it might be easier to find someone in the same city who could assist. Or wait for better advice from someone else. :) :)