I recently bought a Laptop (Dell Latitude D500) from a town surplus sale. When I bought it it was only the box. So when I finally turned it on I noticed that it had an administrative password on it. Is there anyway that I could remove the password or even format it by using a floppy disk being that it has no CDRom drive.

Hi there Mr Man,

Firstly, welcome to CF. It would be appreciated that if you ask for computer help that you answer some help threads too. That way we can continue to provide a free support service for the community.

What sort of password is on the machine - does Windows boot up, or is the password asked for before Windows appears?

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Well there is no password to get on or anything and I do have access to a limited account there are things on there that I need to get rid of an update which I can't do from a limited account.

Have you tried booting into safe mode [keep hitting or hold down F8 after BIOS is complete but before Windows starts to boot]?
You should be able to log on as the Administator - on most Windows installs, there is no password set for this account.

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Ash
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Yes I have tried to boot into safe mode but all of the accounts that have administrative access have either been disabled or the password has been changed and the regisrty and permissions have been changed so that it does allow you to change or long into these accounts. I'm tried to locate a password recovery program that fits on a floppy disk but had no luck and the one program that I did use gave me a A prompt but any command I used after that wasn't recongized.

The easiest option for you to try would be to get hold of an external CD ROM drive and boot the Windows install CD from it - you will then be able to format over the existing install. If the computer has no optical drive, there will come a time where you need to format it in the future and you will then be able to.

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Ash
CF Founder
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