Thanks Mark and Beksy,
Yes, the thread started by Nav help me tremendously, although I had to uninstall 9i and remnants of 8i floating about in the registry and then re-install and made sure I change the password's SYS and SYSTEM using the password management tool.
After this the database was fine, apart from not being able to load the new sample schemas provided with 9i as the required directory cannot be found anywhereon my laptop.
I can appreciate the security aspect of having a password to startup the database in 9i, I am just surprised that this was not the case with the 8i Personal Edition and I suppose this is really what I am asking, if this is new feature with 9i Personal Edition.
To further complicate the issue, my colleague at work has 9i PE for Win98 on his NT laptop and he is not asked to supply a password everytime he starts the database up!

but reasonably
Thanks again!