need recovery or boot disk for my keyed copy of xp need help

[Guest]

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.

 

[Not Me]

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.

 

[Patrick Keenan]

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.

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, 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

 

[Paul Randall]

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