[mrrohan]

ok so a family member wanted me to fix a laptop, i took a look, and its a mess. i just want to reinstall the entire OS, except there seems to be no way to during boot up.

what i mean is when i turn on the pc the first thing i see it a black screen with the text "password:". i find that wierd because ive never seen that before. if anyone knows why or how to get it off that would probably help alot.

next after entering the pw, it goes staight to booting windows XP. i push F2, F8, Del, and every other button i can fit before i goes to boot up. i dont understand why it cant enter setup.


but ultimatly what i want to do is just reformat. i dont think i have the disc that came with the PC, so is there a way to get it like from bootdisc.com or anything like that. or maybe through the pc while on windows, is there a way?.

what i was going to try to do, if sucessful in getting the pc to boot from cd, was use one from another pc. its windows xp media center but i thought its better than nothing. so is that why it isnt workig, because im using a different pc's recovery disc? if i put the included one will it recognize it and just work?

im using a toshiba satellite notebook Pentium4 m. if you need the model number i can write it. i also have a stucker on the laptops bottom with the XP home edition sticer.

this pc is such a mess, it has like 20 different network connection settings for 4 different countries and stuff from everywhrere...its sooooo slow!

and also sorry for the long post

[mrrohan]

so nobody knows why i have to enter a password before bootup?

[d-shark]

try taking out the battery then taking the 3V battery from the motherboard anf leaving for say 10 or 20 minutes?

[Dave Hybrid]

Originally Posted by mrrohan so nobody knows why i have to enter a password before bootup?

It's because someone has put password protection on the whole machine.

This type of password is not to be confused with a BIOS password.

It can only be reset by a manufacturer or by swapping the whole motherboard.

So basically unless you enter the correct password the machine is completely useless.

[evilfantasy]

Guys read the whole post. They are not trying to bypass the password.

next after entering the pw, it goes staight to booting windows XP. i push F2, F8, Del, and every other button i can fit before i goes to boot up. i dont understand why it cant enter setup.

You will need a valid XP CD. If not then as long as everything works OK then just start by uninstalling everythin you don't want.