I hope this isn't the wrong forum for this post, but I'm not sure which one is right for my problem. My sister bought an older Gateway laptop at an auction. When she got home she found that she can't use it because at bootup it asks for the password. Obviously she has no idea what it is, since it evidently is the previous owner's password.. Is there a way to get past that? It has Windows 98 OS. I have an installation cd of Windows 98SE from an older Gateway computer of mine that I no longer use. Would it be possible for me to uninstall the operating system on hers and install 98SE from my cd on it? Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
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(Solved) Get Past the Password?
(6 posts)- Remove Solved Status
rosakw, it depends on where the password prompt is. Are you seeing this on the Windows 98 login screen? If so, then resintalling Windows is the way to go. You have no idea what kind of bad software or settings the previous owner had, so a fresh install of Windows is recommended.
If the password prompt is being presented *before* Windows even starts, this is a different matter as it could be a BIOS password. If this is what you see, please provide the complete model number of the old Gateway laptop.
yes you can, you can enter the BIOS (by pressing some ¨F¨ key at computer startup,it could be F12 or F11, it depends) and set it to read the CD first, make sure you dont change things other than the order or perpipherals; it should look pretty much like this:
(screen may vary a little but you should make sure it says ¨CDROM¨ instead of Floppy or anything else where it says ¨First boot device¨)
Then go to save changes and quit, you should restart and insert Windows CD (I´d recommend you install a newer operating system, but that would depend on the computer´s specs) and it will start and ask you if you want to boot from CD, hit yes or strike any key or whatever the screen says, once there, it should ask you to format the hard drive before installing the operating system, should look like this:
then if you hit enter, or whatever key to install the operating system the screen should appear as something like this (probably with less letters, every letter represents a hard drive or a partition)
select the partition where you want to install the operative system and it will show these options:
select ¨format computer using the NTFS partition¨ (as seen on that image) and then it should format and install the operating system itself after wich it will ask you to make a user account and create a password if you want to.
Good luck on formatting.. kind of a loooong reply lol
Thank you both so much for your replies. Actually, I haven't seen it myself, as she lives in another town. I'm going there Thursday to see what I can do (possibly the blind leading the blind!?). She called last night to tell me the problem. She told me the model is Gateway Solo 2500. I looked it up and I gather it's a pretty old model.
GaardCeteru, 'looooong' reply is just fine! Very helpful...I will refer to it while attempting to help my sister. I have a Windows XP Home Edition installation cd as well as cd's for drivers and applications. I no longer use the computer it was originally installed on. It seems I remember hearing that XP can't be installed on another computer...don't remember the reason for that.
I will report back Thursday, hopefully with good result! Again, thank you both very much for your help!
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