a relative died and left me a dell laptop its password protected will changing the hard drive let me use it?

Question

or is there any other way round it.

Answer 1

Changing the hard drive will solve this but you'll have to install a new operating system on it. There is stuff on the internet for password cracking but it's not straightforward and depends on the operating system.

Answer 2

Has your relative left a 'password hint'? If so then maybe you could guess it. I know that Dell PCs have a bypass switch on the motherboard, which disables the windows password, but I'm not sure about laptops. Try getting in through safe mode, then creating a new account, or formatting the hard drive if you're going to anyways. Hope this helps.

Answer 3

This depends on what is passworded is it the BIOS or just the operating system.

If it is just the logon then the simplest way is to Wipe the drive and reinstall the operating system assuming you have the disks and Keycode that is.

If the BIOS is Passworded then you'll need to do a factory reset.

Answer 4

If it's a BIOS password, you'll have to call Dell to get their engineers to change it. If it's the Windows password, simply erasing the disk ans reinstalling Windows will solve your problem.

And yes, changing the disk is basically the same thing - you 'll have to reinstall Windows.

Answer 5

A dell dealership or service centre should be able to remove the restrictions using a service administrator log in but may ask you to prove you are the owner.

Answer 6

you can use the factory reset disk to return to factory settings as it was when purchased new

Hold down F12 while booting - and have the CD in the drive

Or you can try and go in via Safe Mode - hold down F8 to get into Safe mode and add a new user in the Control panel with your crudentials.

Answer 7

a new drive will do the job, but you will of course need to install a new operating system... windows for example. if you could get into the drive pre-bootstrapping you might be able to format it using dos or fdisk or something... that'll effectively make it a new drive

Answer 8

Wipe the hard drive and reinstall windows

Answer 9

i don't really know about the laptop think i'm not a computor expert ^^ but you could always try calling dell

Answer 10

If it's the bios password:

Boot from floppy, to get a command prompt (C:>)

type in the following lines

A
MOV AX,0
MOV AX,CX
OUT 70,AL
MOV AX,0
OUT 71,AL
INC CX
CMP CX,100
JB 103
INT 20

G
Q

This should clear BIOS password.

If it's windows- as said above format then reinstall