My6 year old somehow changed the settings on the welcome screen on my laptop.Now I am locked out, is there any way to get into the control panel from the welcome screen without entering a password?

Hi, What system are you running, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 2000 Server, Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2008? Please try to log on another user account and then you can change the password for this account. If you are running Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008, try boot the computer into Safe Mode and log on the default administrator account. Hope it helps. Tim Quan - MSFT