What password ?

[Davey-T]

My obs'y PC, Win XP Pro has been running happily for more years than I can remember, just turned it on not having used it for a couple of weeks due to summer skies and it wants me to enter a password before it will start up, this is a bit strange as I have had it from new and it has never had a password.

Any helpful hints that don't involve hammers ?

Dave

[ghostdance]

Darn....was going to suggest hammers...  

[Paul M]

Are there any "tinkers" in the house?. I used to mess with my dad's stuff and deny any knowledge of how it happened.

As for your password, hmm, can't help , sorry.

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk

[Tinker1947]

Is this the BIOS or System (Windows ) password, the BIOS is normally remove a link and replace it, System password i don't know....

[kalasinman]

Try taking cover off (power chord removed prior). Look for small battery on main board. Remove that and wait 20 minutes. Then replace it , making sure of polarity. Button up, restore power and fire it up. That will remove boot up password.

If computer is old and has not been serviced, a great time to clean in there, and replace the battery with a new one. They are good for about 4-5 years only.

[damnut]

Whilst I hope it is as simple as above:---

If it is the bios password, then the whole idea is that it is secure. Removal of the bios backup battery may work may not

A resource for you :-- https://www.technibble.com/how-to-bypass-or-remove-a-bios-password/.

If it is not the power on / bios password and it is the windows logon drop me a pm.

[Davey-T]

It's the windows log in password, thanks for the offer Damien, I remember in the dim past of fledgling windows it was fairly easy to hack into the password file, probably not as easy now.

Have phoned  my computer man and will take it to him shortly.

Last night turned into a computer nightmare, all I planned to do was try and take a quick pic' of Pluto so the obs'y laptop wouldn't start, tried another laptop and PHD wouldn't play, tried another laptop but it didn't have the Loadstar driver so had to download that, PHD still refused to calibrate so downloaded another PHD version, eventually got it all working about 1.30 am.

Just trying to compare my pic's with a starmap to see if it was all worth it and I managed to capture Pluto.

Dave

[damnut]

No Probs. If your chap cannot resolve, drop me a pm.

[Astroboffin]

Might sound like a stupid question, but have you tried just clicking the button as if you had entered a password but leaving it blank, as I had an old PC that did this, and I just left the box empty and clicked the button and booted as normal, but had to do this every time from then on, but had never done it before or ever had a password on the machine.....very strange

As sugested above, dont bother removing the internal battery, it will not work, and you will default all your bios settings and could mess it up al together....

Regards

AB

[Davey-T]

It's gone to the menders now

Dave

[kalasinman]

Might sound like a stupid question, but have you tried just clicking the button as if you had entered a password but leaving it blank, as I had an old PC that did this, and I just left the box empty and clicked the button and booted as normal, but had to do this every time from then on, but had never done it before or ever had a password on the machine.....very strange

As sugested above, dont bother removing the internal battery, it will not work, and you will default all your bios settings and could mess it up al together....

Regards

AB

Wrong. In my experience maintaining and repairing 150 computers for a local HS, removing the internal battery simply resets the bios to defaults. It can't "mess anything up" as it's no different from the internal battery dying. Have done exactly this many times. True, it won't remove a user password.

[Davey-T]

Well that was strange, it turns out it did indeed have a password, when I purchased it many years ago when Bill Gates was a youngster the first user account I had used a password but when shortly after it went permanently into the obs'y I renamed it "Obsy" as a new user / admin' and have been using it ever since with no password.

I had forgotten all about the other password acc, blame it on old age, for some reason it decided it was called Dave 1 not Obsy and wanted a password before it would start.

All sorted and running again, must see if I can get some memory tablets from the doctors 

Dave

[Astroboffin]

Wrong. In my experience maintaining and repairing 150 computers for a local HS, removing the internal battery simply resets the bios to defaults. It can't "mess anything up" as it's no different from the internal battery dying. Have done exactly this many times. True, it won't remove a user password.

Yes you are correct it will set the bios back to default, but if something has been altered in the bios to match a new piece of hardware for instance, then by defaulting the bios that hardware then may not work, such as a newer type of hard drive or graphics card, so I was just wanting the OP to take precautions, as the OP was obviously not as computer orientated as me and you.

And I too am a computer engineer and run my own business doing it now for the public.

AB

[Davey-T]

 as the OP was obviously not as computer orientated as me and you.

AB

Not a complete ignoramus, spent a few years back in the day started trying to squeeze 600K of DOS memory to play games then building gaming desktops and happily over clocking and flashing bios etc, been a while though think the last one had AGP8 graphics 

Now I'm old I find I'd rather just pay somebody to fix things, especially laptops. Bit like car repairs, used to do all my own including engine / gearbox rebuilds welding up rusty holes but now I just take the cars to the local garage, leaves more time for astro stuff

Thanks for your interest guys.

Dave

[Tinker1947]

I go along with the op (Dave) on this i used to do every thing myself, motorbikes, cars, vans any repair/upgrade wasn't to big a job, PC's build my own, quite few years into a bus pass and i stick the car in a garage for repairs, PC's still get a bit of love but i think those days are numbered.....

[Astroboffin]

Not a complete ignoramus, spent a few years back in the day started trying to squeeze 600K of DOS memory to play games then building gaming desktops and happily over clocking and flashing bios etc, been a while though think the last one had AGP8 graphics 

Now I'm old I find I'd rather just pay somebody to fix things, especially laptops. Bit like car repairs, used to do all my own including engine / gearbox rebuilds welding up rusty holes but now I just take the cars to the local garage, leaves more time for astro stuff

Thanks for your interest guys.

Dave

Yes those were the days, in fact I still have my pristine condition ZX Spectrum 48k computer, I loved that "Basic" programming language, was the best I think, remember having games on cassettes and when loading all,the noises they made....lol

AB

[Tinker1947]

You go back as far as a ZX81 all the mother board bits came in a plastic bag with a mother board.....

[Davey-T]

You go back as far as a ZX81 all the mother board bits came in a plastic bag with a mother board.....

Ah the "good old days" browsing Exchange & Mart looking for bits to build your very own computer that could play noughts and crosses, if you were lucky 

Dave

[hughgilhespie]

Ok, I can't resist. My first computer was a Nascom 1. A kit of parts to be soldered together. When you finally got it working you had 2048 BYTES of memeory. Naturally the 40 character by 25 line screen display took half of that, then the 'operating system' NASSYS1, used another couple of hundred bytes of RAM. Finally, you could start leaning to program (in machine code, of course, in your 968 bytes of user memory. I managed a decent Game of Life and a couple of other bits and pieces before I gave in and lashed out another £200 on an 8k memory board. Then I could run Tiny (integer) Basic and a mnemonic assembler. Still fairly tricky but, I have to say it wasa truly great way to learn about computers and computing.

Sorry, just another BOF rant.

Regards, Hugh

[damnut]

Oh lordy, used to manage a graphics dept in the early days of Computer games,  speccy mb so bad we used to set them in epoxy resin and use for paper weights.