System Restore

My daughter was engaged to a man who died in 2010. He had an older Dell laptop for work. Work told her to keep it. She tried to have me set it up for her son, but it has a password. Since the original owner is dead, it's kinda hard to ask him what it is. She says there should be nothing important on there and all we want to do is return it to it's original factory settings. Is there an easy way to do this? I have tried a bunch of stuff, but nothing helped. It doesn't appear to have the partition to allow recovery and no one has recovery disks. I also tried a password "cracker" (OPSCrack... or something). That thing just gives me a headache, and I'm no longer closer to figuring out the password. As I said, all I want to do is make it boot as if it just came out of the box. Is there a way to do this? If I have to buy new software, I could probably get him a cheap laptop or desk top for less money. Any ideas? Thanx.

L

 

Is it a Windows password (on the Welcome screen for his username) or is a BIOS password where you can't do anything with the laptop until the password is entered?

Do you know which OS it is running?

 

Sorry... the account password and I believe XP... I can find out exactly, if it makes a difference, when I get home tonight.

 

I've tested this and it worked for me on both XP and Win7.

I can't remember exactly what you do to use it. Their guide is not exactly clear but the program does work. I believe all you do is choose the OS when it finds it. Then pick the user you want to change. Then tick the box "password is empty" (and possibly untick the box for "password never expire" but I am unsure whether unticking this box is necessary. I would try it without first.). And Apply the change. I have the Cd somewhere and will give a quick test.

It is an ISO file and has to be written to a blank CD as an IMAGE file. Imgburn's "Write Image File to Disc" option will do it or use your own burning software. http://forum.imgburn.com/index.php?showtopic=61

Then boot from the CD and run the program.

 

You don't have to untick the box for password never expire. Just tick the box for password is empty.

Your probably best just running the current XP. You'll have to determine if his user has administrator rights if you are going to use the current OS. That would be in Control Panel and then Users to check if the current user has Admin rights. If not you would have to blank the password for the built in Administrator account so you could sign into that to create a new account with Administrator rights for her son to use.

Also once in XP you could check Disk Management to see if the recovery partition exits or if a set of recovery discs could be burnt (if the company never burnt them you may be able to.). How did you determine that it didn't exist?

 

Well damn if that didn't work! Thank you so much for the idea. My daughter and grandson thank you also!

 

I'm sure there is a better place to ask, but I've been working on this laptop for my grandson... taking off stuff he doesn't need (expired McAfee, old documents, etc), defrag... junk like that. I went to connect to my home wireless network and I can't get it to connect. It says I don't have any, when every other computer in the house can find it. The laptop is a Dell Latitude D505. The connections show an active 1394 connection, that the LAN cable is not attached (which it is not), and a Dell 1350 WLAN mini PCI card which is disabled. I try to enable it and it gives me all the connection properties. I attempt to set TCPIP to automatically obtain an IP address. What do I need to do to get this thing so it connects as my Inspiron 1720 does? I have a NetGear wireless router. Thanx.

L

 

Never mind... did some tinkering and just restored system defaults and the thing found my network! The previous owner had some 4G thing set up and the card was blocked! Thanx any way.

 

Well... it works on my network (which is not password protected... yes, I know), but when he takes the laptop to his house, the network is password protected. I find it using the card utility and connect. It says it has a good connection, but gets caught up trying to acquire a network address. The little icon in the tray has a yellow ball that bounces back and forth. When I right click on the multi-bar thing I get everything is right except the address shows as 0.0.0.0

Not a clue what to do with this. I connect it to the router with a cable. It wouldn't connect to the internet. I reset everything from static to automatic and I can connect. I tried the same thing with the wireless connection, but it just sits there and keeps trying to connect. I'm not too good at this networking thing. Any help would be greatly appreciated.