Managed to forget my password on my old Dell laptop after months of no use

Any ideas PLEASE!

Cheers
TS

Would you like to borrow mine? It’s always worked on my laptop…

If its a old dell lappy, try removing the bios battery & boot it?

Remember it worked for my Mrs lappy many moons ago, not sure if it will work with the latest version though 😉

Can’t help but others may need to know which password? Laptop or windows?

i will have a quid on it being ‘tankslapper’ and another quid on it being the same as your STW password.

however i expect better odds if/when both of those are the same.

Turn it over, there’ll be a little sticky label with it written on.

Or is that just me?

what richmars said – if windoze, then use a pc to download and burn hirens’s boot cd (google it). boot from cd and follow instructions – hasn’t failed me yet.
congratulations, you’re now a hacker

or ……………

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;en-us;306214&

Its a Dell Inspiron 510m about 5 years old now

Can’t believe I’ve been so dull!

Assuming you mean Windows password, is it XP Pro or Home? If the latter, you can get into it with a broken biscuit. Boot it up in safe mode, it should give you an Administrator logon on the Welcome screen. No password required. Then, just reset your user password from there. XP Pro is a bit hardier. (-:

Assuming it’s the windows password you can try:
Ctrl Alt Del twice at the Welcome screen.
This should give you a login box.
Type in User:
Administrator and leave the password blank

If that works you should be able to reset your password from the User Accounts control panel.

Otherwise a Boot disk is the way I would go as BigButSlimmer says.

Like Cougar said..

if its windows download and burn a copy of erd commander stick it in the cd drive and you can then change the password to what you want, assuming its the windows password you have lost.

danny

On the off chance it’s your BIOS password then Dell Tech Support will be able to take you through a reset process, but will want you to convince them you’re the owner first.

Thanks guys I’ll give it a bash – the advice not the Dell!

Quick update:

I tried again to log into the admin screen and in a fit of pique jammed in a password from five + years ago and heh presto! This time I’ve created a hint!

So now the Tankslapper household has two laptops on the go, Mrs.T is in the kitchen and I’m tapping away merrily in the living room – Aaahhh! wedded bliss instilled again!

Cheers for the help peeps