Guest rachelle Posted August 25, 2007 Posted August 25, 2007 I recently purchased a used laptop that already had xp installed. The computer worked great but it had no disk with it. The key code for xp is on the sticker. But then it crashed or will not load. I cannot get in there to make a recovery inside due to people we bought it from did give up the administrator password so i cannot access the bios. Since my keyed oem software that is on the pc make it possibe to order disk recovery or to get a boot disk. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I can get it to the point of loading but then it stops and goes to black screen with curser in left corner blinking and i did get a unmountable disk error but cannot boot it in safe mode or others, i can get to bios but requires administrator password and of course they didnt get us one. Thanks so much. -- Rachelle
Guest Not Me Posted August 25, 2007 Posted August 25, 2007 Re: need recovery or boot disk for my keyed copy of xp need help Since you have a valid key, almost any OEM CD of the same version of XP should work. Once you have an OEM CD, you should be able to boot from the CD and do a repair or reinstall. You may have to go to the manufacturer's website and download the drivers on another machine and burn them to CD, but I've done that many times. Depending on the manufacturer, sometimes you can order the recovery disks from the maker. There are ways to reset the BIOS password, but it varies by maker on laptops. "rachelle" <rachelle@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message news:080F4DDF-7B94-471C-8AFD-4551C5596EB9@microsoft.com... >I recently purchased a used laptop that already had xp installed. The > computer worked great but it had no disk with it. The key code for xp is > on > the sticker. But then it crashed or will not load. I cannot get in there > to > make a recovery inside due to people we bought it from did give up the > administrator password so i cannot access the bios. Since my keyed oem > software that is on the pc make it possibe to order disk recovery or to > get a > boot disk. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I can get it to the > point > of loading but then it stops and goes to black screen with curser in left > corner blinking and i did get a unmountable disk error but cannot boot it > in > safe mode or others, i can get to bios but requires administrator password > and of course they didnt get us one. Thanks so much. > -- > Rachelle
Guest Patrick Keenan Posted August 25, 2007 Posted August 25, 2007 Re: need recovery or boot disk for my keyed copy of xp need help "rachelle" <rachelle@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message news:080F4DDF-7B94-471C-8AFD-4551C5596EB9@microsoft.com... >I recently purchased a used laptop that already had xp installed. The > computer worked great but it had no disk with it. The key code for xp is > on > the sticker. But then it crashed or will not load. I cannot get in there > to > make a recovery inside due to people we bought it from did give up the > administrator password so i cannot access the bios. Since my keyed oem > software that is on the pc make it possibe to order disk recovery or to > get a > boot disk. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I can get it to the > point > of loading but then it stops and goes to black screen with curser in left > corner blinking and i did get a unmountable disk error but cannot boot it > in > safe mode or others, i can get to bios but requires administrator password > and of course they didnt get us one. Thanks so much. > -- > Rachelle You are describing two problems. The first is that there should have been some way to recover the XP install. Unfortunately, many laptops rely on the hard disk for this - as you can see, this is a fatally flawed scheme. There is a company, http://www.restoredisks.com, that apparently provides reinstallation disks for many systems. I've never used them but it could be promising. The second is that you may have to contact the laptop manufacturer's support center to remove the password, unless you find a way to reset the BIOS entirely. This is easy on desktops, but laptops don't use the same kind of scheme. Try, unplugging the power adapter, remove the battery, be sure there is no power source. Press and hold the power switch for one minute. Plug the AC back in and try getting into the BIOS again. You may need to repeat this a few times. There may be a default password for the BIOS, and pages like this may help: http://www.uktsupport.co.uk/reference/biosp.htm http://xtreview.com/review113.htm Alternately, you will need to either get the password or contact the manufacterer's support. This may not be free. HTH -pk
Guest Paul Randall Posted August 25, 2007 Posted August 25, 2007 Re: need recovery or boot disk for my keyed copy of xp need help You could use this to create a bootable floppy or CD which can reset the password, so you can get in: http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/ -Paul Randall "rachelle" <rachelle@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message news:080F4DDF-7B94-471C-8AFD-4551C5596EB9@microsoft.com... >I recently purchased a used laptop that already had xp installed. The > computer worked great but it had no disk with it. The key code for xp is > on > the sticker. But then it crashed or will not load. I cannot get in there > to > make a recovery inside due to people we bought it from did give up the > administrator password so i cannot access the bios. Since my keyed oem > software that is on the pc make it possibe to order disk recovery or to > get a > boot disk. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I can get it to the > point > of loading but then it stops and goes to black screen with curser in left > corner blinking and i did get a unmountable disk error but cannot boot it > in > safe mode or others, i can get to bios but requires administrator password > and of course they didnt get us one. Thanks so much. > -- > Rachelle
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