Member Panel

Hi

I'm trying to help a friend who wants to format and reinstall windows but computer is not booting from cd. I'm guessing the bios is set to boot from HD before CD (but dont know for certain), but the bios is passworded and he has no idea what it could be (not first hand). Is there any way to get the computer to boot from cd another way or to format and reinstall XP without booting from CD?

Thanks for any help you can give, and apologies if this is the wrong forum to post in

Hi and welcome to PC Help Forum.

You may need to look on the motherboard to see if there is a "Clear CMOS password" jumper that you can reset. Alternatively, you could try removing the bios battery from the motherboard and the power cable (for 5 mins) then replace them both and see if the pw has gone.

Hi, thanks for the response.

Problem is my friend isn't that technically minded and I'm not sure he'd jump at the idea of opening up the computer and unfortunately it's not something i can do for him over the phone. Is there nething a little less extreme that he can try.

Thanks for any help

What Hengis suggested would be the easiest way to go about it, however there are usually default bios passwords, ask him what sort of bios he has (it will normally have a logo during post) for example AWARD or Pheonix then search google for the default password, or post here to tell us which kind of bios it is and we could have a look.

..or look here: http://www.pchelpforum.com/hardware-...-password.html

Or that, didn't catch that, sorry

Hi this litlle program works well CmosPwd - CMOS and BIOS password recovery tool I use it when I can't be bothered unpluging the PC and removing the battery

download it here Download CmosPwd 4.8 - CmosPwd - CMOS and BIOS password recovery tool - Softpedia