laptop wont boot.

[terry_gardener]

Wonder if anyone can help.

someone asked if i can fix a laptop Acer extensa 4220 as it wont boot.

the person who give me the laptop didn't know any of the passwords as he got it of someone else and wasn't supplied any.

so i started the laptop and it didn't boot, windows vista Home premium wouldn't load so i tried to access the boot options and safe mode wouldn't work either.

ran startup repair from the boot menu it finished and still wouldn't boot.

so tried to access the bios to change the boot order as HDD is first. asks for password. there is no cmos jumper switch anywhere on the motherboard had it to bits. as tried leaving battery out for about 10 mins.

tried the recovery software by pressing alt+f10 and when i select reset to manufacture defaults it asks for password.

loaded the windows boot menu and selected repair system and system restore appeared and then asked for a password.

is there anything i can do to get round these passwords.

ps also don't have any recovery disks

 

[the_mikey]

I had a laptop with a failed HDD, unfortunately the recovery partition was on that HDD too. Ordered a new HDD, the system back up made two months prior was useless! Installed ubuntu instead..

 

[ian turner]

Quote from another forum about a 5220

Hi guys.. I got this one fixed
what I did is took out the hard drive.. put it
in another laptop.. run the recovery cd- when it ended I did not restart the
laptop but switched it off then transferred the hard drive to the other laptop
with the bios issue..
It continued with the windows setup.. then once it
booted up I runned killcmos software to take out the bios password..

Note this individual removed the battery for 30 minutes and that didn't remove the password which
suggests it's held in flash somehow.
Not much point trying to install ubuntu on a laptop that won't allow you to boot from anything other than
the harddrive which won't boot is there

Generally speaking only business laptops that have been over protected by the IT department have
passwords over everything so I assume your friend bought this from a man in a pub

 

[twobiker]

I had a laptop like that, it got a virus and renamed the disc drive so that I could not reboot it , took it outside and took a Lump Hammer to it, very satisfying, should be on the NHS,