Windows 2000 Professional Edition

aoa321

Hi,

A friend of mine has been given a DELL laptop by his sister, she only used it for a work related MBA, it's probably 3 or 4 years old, rarely been used and he wants it for home use now, looks like a fine machine.

However we're completely locked out, when we turn it on it boots up with Windows 2000 Professional Edition, and asks for a password - his sis has no clue what the password is and doesn't want to hear any more about it.

I have no installation or boot disk for windows 2000 - so my question is - is there any way around this ...

1. Is there any way of signing in without a password?
2. Is there any other way of booting the machine so that I can see exactly what's on it in terms of memory/disk?
3. If we buy a new operating system such as Vista will we be able to install it or will we still be locked out by windows 2000 ?

Any answers or any direction would be very much appreciated, if I could just find out which tree I should I be barking up I'd take it from there.

Thanks in advance
aoa

yoyo

Can you boot into safe mode? if you can login as admin and see if your asked for a password, if its only a user password you can remove it in safe mode/control panel, user accounts etc... Not sure in Win 2k but should be something like that, if its an actual admin password, there are free password reset discs u can download and boot off to do it, think this is one HERE, not certain itll work but sound like it will

Nick

Edit: Dont run Vista on a laptop that old, It probably wouldn't be a good expierience!

Karoma

You could reset an admin account's password: http://home.eunet.no/pnordahl/ntpasswd/
(You basically download the CD or floppy disk version. Put it on a disc/k and boot up following the instructions and reboot with the disk out and you can login.)
The hard disk may have confidential information on it which if leaked could get his sister in trouble... Better option:

You can install another operating system.
(However, the computer may not meet the required specifications to run Vista.)



(There may be an unguarded administrator account, but it's unlikely as it was a work machine (and one would hope someone there would secure it that much at least)

Feelgood

aoa321 wrote: »

Hi,

A friend of mine has been given a DELL laptop by his sister, she only used it for a work related MBA, it's probably 3 or 4 years old, rarely been used and he wants it for home use now, looks like a fine machine.

However we're completely locked out, when we turn it on it boots up with Windows 2000 Professional Edition, and asks for a password - his sis has no clue what the password is and doesn't want to hear any more about it.

I have no installation or boot disk for windows 2000 - so my question is - is there any way around this ...

1. Is there any way of signing in without a password?
2. Is there any other way of booting the machine so that I can see exactly what's on it in terms of memory/disk?
3. If we buy a new operating system such as Vista will we be able to install it or will we still be locked out by windows 2000 ?

Any answers or any direction would be very much appreciated, if I could just find out which tree I should I be barking up I'd take it from there.

Thanks in advance
aoa

1. There are loads of ways of doing this but by the sounds of things you are going to have to get a professional to do it or try googling - "Bypassing windows 2000 administrator password"

2. Vista will run completely crap on a laptop that old, I wouldn't bother to be honest...

If I was you I would go looking for a version of Linux to install on it, its free and is excellent. Otherwise try getting software to hack the administrator password.

zilog_jones

If it's the age you say it is, XP should run fine on it. There's lots of stupid things Microsoft won't port to 2000 like IE7, newer versions of MSN Messenger, Office 2007, etc.

Sherifu

You can put xp on it and overwrite the win2k installation if you're prepared to lose whatever data is on it. As to how well it runs, that depends on the specs but it should be fine.

Gadgetman496

This will do it for you

http://www.d--b.webpark.pl/dreampackpl_en.htm


Download the ready to burn ISO file.

-