After accepting BIOS change to boot from DC drive, does not do so

I'm new and want to hello to everybody, and sorry if I did not get the hang of these forums as yet-posting in wrong category etc. Will correct mistake as needed. I am trying to get a computer booted for my friend who lost his windows password-it's an advent pc on vista. I have the original installation DVD, because I also own an advent vista PC, but have sold the original DVD because I copied it to my hard drives believing I can copy the files to a DVD or boot from a USB drive just as well, if my advent vista crashes. I found I could not copy the files to a DVD even though they had been taken off a single DVD as the files were too large to fit into 1 dvd. I tried to boot from the friend's CD-Rom drive with Ultimate Boot Disk, but when resetting BIOS to boot from CD drive it boots as usual and needs the windows password. System Restore also does not work w/o windows password. Is the PC protected by a BIOS password? Obviously there must be some way out of the situation?

 

Welcome aboard. Just boot to safe mode and re-install. Otherwise, pull the battery out and leave it alone for 10 minutes, then restart. No more admin password needed but it will delete everything if you decide to reformat.

 

Welcome to Major Geeks!

How did your friend lose his Windows password? What burning program are you using to make these CD/DVDs, and how did you burn them and with what settings? How can you have the original installation DVD when you state that you sold it?

A BIOS power on password would require you to enter it immediately after turning the computer on and before trying to boot Windows. Sort of doubt that this is your problem.

The UBCD creates an ISO file which should be burned to disk (not as a data file) but with an application that recognizes the ISO format ( image file ) and will burn it as a bootable disk. This program does it wonderfully and is free, http://www.majorgeeks.com/ImgBurn_d4870.html.


If you are just wanting to reset the administrator password, then this will usually do the job. http://pogostick.net/~pnh/ntpasswd/. Hope this helps!

Please pardon me Auggie, as I was typing and searching while you replied!

 

safe mode did not work

 

I made a copy of the files on the installtion DVD before selling it

 

Will the Ultimate Boot CD that you have boot your computer? Just wanting to verify that it works correctly.