Help with a Dell laptop

[retro-man]

Working on a friends dell laptop. He got it from a friend, whatever. I can not get past the password login info. Have got to the point of finding return to all defaults info but then it asks for the password which he does not know. I am locked at this point at this screen. Even turning it on and off holding f2 and f10 . I have a windows 7 program that I put in thinking it would override this but does not. Anyone have any ideas on this? Not that familiar with Dell products. Thanks in advance.
Jon

 

[danemodsandy]

Several Tips:

Try these as passwords, without the quotes:

"Password" (you'd be amazed how often people use this one)

The name of the retailer who sold the machine, i.e., "Best Buy"

"Preferred Customer"

"Valued Customer"

"Dell"

The model name and number of the machine, i.e., "Latitude D620" (you'll find this somewhere on the machine)

If the laptop was sold by a VAR (value added reseller), they set the laptop up prior to sale, installing Windows the way they felt was best. The password was to keep the customer from fiddling with it during the warranty period. The above passwords are some commonly used VAR passwords.

 

[DADoES]

 
I found an offline Windows password & registry editor a few years ago to deal with the same situation.  It creates a boot CD (that runs Linux) and presents a list of the user accounts.  The passwords are not shown but the utility allows *changing* them to gain access.

--> If Windows EFS (Encrypting File System) is involved, the encrypted files will be rendered UNREADABLE unless the *original* password can be remembered.

Instructions and download (about 2/3 way down) are on the "Bootdisk" page.

Offline Windows Password & Registry Editor

 

[cuffs054]

retro, can't tell if this will help you but my lop top asks for one but I never put one in. So I just hit the enter key and it by-passes it.

 

[arbilab]

There are Windows password rewriters, believe freeware, I had one in the lab.

However you may be looking at a BIOS password, Dells do that. If the password screen looks more like DOS than Windows, that's Dell's BIOS. Still try the suggestions above, can't hurt.

Dell has a master password and another set of passwords based on the model/serial but they are very reluctant to give those out. Even when I worked there in the engineering lab they wouldn't tell me the master. They will tell you the model/serial but only if you can PROVE ownership. Oh, and dealing with Dell at all is like a root canal without novocaine.