Hi all,

I'm new to this so please forgive me if this is posted in the incorrect place..

My sister recently bought a second-hand Compaq EVO n800c laptop. When she viewed it at the seller's house, everything looked good because the seller had logged on. However, when she got it home and booted up, she was presented with the Windows logon screen. The problem is, she doesn't have the seller's password. We've tried for the last two weeks to contact the seller, but can't get through.

I've tried Googling to find out ways of bypassing the Windows password, but couldn't find anything useful. Any ideas?

By the way, I've tried changing options in the BIOS to boot from CD-ROM so that a clean version of Windows could be installed, but the only two options available are to boot from: 1. multibay hard drive, 2. local hard drive. I cannot make a boot disk because there is no floppy drive on this pc.

Any help anyone could provide would be hugely appreciated because this is really annoying me now at this stage ! Thanks

Hi there and welcome to PC Help Forum

Sorry to hear about your troubles, it's a difficult situation for you. Whilst I'm sure your intentions are entirely honorable, I can't verify that and unfortunately my help will only extend to a (very informative) link: Forgot the Administrator's Password? - Windows Password Recovery - Windows Password Reset

I hope you get the information and help that you need.

Hi,

Thanks for the link - I've looked at that already myself though and all the solutions seem to involve a boot cd or floppy, which unfortunately will not work since I don't have a floppy drive and can't change the boot sequence to boot from CD. I can't boot to safe mode either: the only options I have are A) to enter the BIOS or B) continue to the Windows logon screen.

I do realise it looks really dodgy asking for help on how to crack Windows passwords, but having scoured the web I haven't been able to come up with a fix that will work and, being the only one with any bit of computer knowledge in my family, my sister is nagging me to get it working!! It seems my only other alternative is to buy a new hard drive, set it up as a slave on some other laptop, install windows to that hard drive and then transfer the hard drive back to my sister's laptop??

Apologies for the double post, but is there some way I could boot DOS from a USB flash stick? If I could get a DOS command prompt to run, would I be able to change directory to the CD drive and run the Windows installation from there? Will Windows XP Home install over Windows Professional or will I be asked for an admin password and be back to square one?

If you want to install XP Home, boot to the Bios and change the boot order so that the CD Rom is the first device and the hard drive is second, put the Windows CD in, save the changes in the Bios and then reboot, and follow the on screen prompts.

Hi MadGamer,

Thanks for the advice, but unfortunately the BIOS doesn't seem to alllow me the option of booting from CD. The BIOS recognises the CD drive in the Devices section, but I can't select it in the boot order for some reason.

Hmm this is a strange one ill notify one of the tech team for you.