Re: Debian on a laptop....
Bill Gladney wrote:
hello...I'm trying to remove the remnants of Debian....but it is
password protected....not my machine...a friend of mine asked me to
get it all off....or format it .....and install a copy of Win XP that
she could use and understand....she bought this computer from another
person...who lost the password....and now I'm faced with the project
of formatting the hard drive....but cannot by-pass the flash page
which comes up .asking me for user ID and password....I wonder if
there's a way to do this without actually taking the hard drive
out....and throwing it as far as I can.....or is there a solution to
this problem..short of getting a new hard drive.....thanx....
I'm not sure what you mean by "the flash page".
If this password is in Debian (or in a boot loader like lilo or grub),
just boot off any operating system's boot media (MS-DOS floppy, Win98
CD, OS/2 boot floppies, Debian CD, Knoppix CD, etc) and use that OS's
partitioning/formatting tool to wipe the drive clean.
If this password is in the BIOS, it won't matter one whit if you remove
the drive and throw it as far as you can, the password will still be
there. In that case, you'll probably have to google for that particular
laptop to find out how to reset the BIOS. I've never done that on a
laptop; on a desktop, you usually have to open the case and move a
jumper (usually located near the battery), power up for a few seconds,
and then move the jumper back for normal operation.
--
Kent
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