Laptop Trouble

[Andrew Grant]

I recently got a laptop from a friend of mine and I wanted to upgrade it to Windows XP Pro. It has no floppy drive or cd-rom. I put an external cd-rom on it and attempted to install windows from there but It's loaded with a bunch of admin restrictions that wont let me install the OS. I don't know any of the passwords.

The laptop is a Dell Latitude L400

P3 700mhz
128 mb ram
20 gig hd.

Please help!

[GX1_Man]

I suppose you're talking about the BIOS setup and/or  hard drive access locked with passwords, so go to the Dell site conveniently located at www.dell.com and look up that model number to see how to clear the passwords. Then we can go from there.

[Andrew Grant]

It's actually passwords within windows on the Adminstrator account. I assume it was setup when windows was installed. I guess the default account which is what i have access to was someones that wasn't trusted to do anything important.

[GX1_Man]

I don't know if you will beat this without a reinstall.

But I just like reinstalling anyway. It removes a lot of surprises.

[Andrew Grant]

I am trying to re-install. When I try to do it through the start-up process the computer doesn't recognize the usb cd-rom and continues to boot from the hard drive. Any ideas to fix that?

[dl65]

Andrew Grant......

I recently got a laptop from a friend of mine and I wanted to upgrade it to Windows XP Pro.

How about asking your friend for the admin password or is that too simple a solution ?

Can you get into the bios .......?   If it's password protected .......remove the Cmos battery for about a minute or two and then replace it and you should be able to get into the bios ...then check to see if the external USB cd drive is being seen .

dl65  

[Andrew Grant]

My friend doesn't know anything about it. I don't think he ever used it. I've been in the bios and i see nothing about the usb cd-rom i have attatched. In the boot options it has the option for removable devices, i think that would include my san disk stick drive. How would i go about copying the setup files from my xp cd to that and booting from it and just let the setup process do the rest since it automaticall searches for the setup files on the d drive(which would be the cd-rom)?

[Fed]

You will have the same problem, I doubt your bios can boot from a usb port at all.

[Mac]

Click on the link below and look for the USB adapter. Take the drive out of the laptop and connect it up to a desktop. Then delete any current partitions, make new ones (Primary and extended plus logical(s)) and full format them.

Put the drive back into the laptop and connect it with a parallel cable. Install XP from the desktop to the laptop.

When up and running make a drive image to an external CD burner or by using the desktop.

Sound reasonable (?) but will it work?

128 MB of RAM is a bit on the low side really, the maximum is 256 MB.

What has it got on it now Windows 2000?

Have you tried simply deleting the old partitions?

[Computer_Commando]

Unless your Dell has an External Media Bay, follow Mac's instructions.

[merlin_2]

It may suffer......under the specs....for winxp pro+ the video display/graphics........lag in other words.....