I just bought it and now its comming up with this computer system #b787mf1-595b is protected by a password. tried to go through the store to find original owners with no luck and dell was useless
SOURCE: adminstrator password problem
If this is a white and grey screen, before windows starts, it's a system board password. To clear this you will need to contact dell, have your service tag and express code ready, and if you haven't already, you will need to register ownership with Dell. I posted a link at the bottom for phone numbers of Dell's support. Dell is great in the fact that they have a master code for each of their machines.
However, if this is a windows password, which I don't believe it is, you will need to start windows in safe mode by pressing F8 at start up. Then log in under administrator and clear passwords in each user account.
Here's the link, the phone numbers are about half way down the page. You'll just need to give them a call, it won't take very long, I've done it a several times with Dell machines I've purchased at auctions.
http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/dsn/en/document?c=us&dl=false&l=en&s=gen&docid=E21A18454B4A6550E030A68F27286358&doclang=en&cs=#1
SOURCE: Dell laptop ... inspiron 6400 System/adminstrator password
I believed this can be resolve by clean the cmos battery. you need to remove the cmos batery from the laptop then power it on then immediately turn it off. then put the battery back to the laptop then power it on keep tapping on f2 to enter setup. please follow the instructions from the link to remove the cmos battery http://tinyurl.com/yb3mhyg
SOURCE: how to unlock my dell
send me the service tag wich u can see on the bottom cover ill send u password .. this is my email [email protected] Thanks
SOURCE: Dell Inspiron 630m HDD upgrade. BIOS does not allow!
After much searching on the web for many unhelpful answers, I finally discovered what the actual issue is, so then I was able to fix it. I will be posting this in as many places as possible so that future people having this issue won't have to struggle with it for hours like I did.
First of all, as much as I love Samsung drives, avoid them for this model. There is some sort of "brain-dead incompatibility" (as one guy put it) that prevents them from working correctly. Western Digital costs more and is slower, but it at least will work correctly in this unit.
The size issue is not the BIOS at all. I discovered this by accident. The issue is that Dell's software engineers are stupid......or at least were. Dell customized the boot loader in the MBR, which gives the www.dell.com bar upon bootup. The issue is that this is not the only thing this weird bit of code does. Programmed into this odd bit of code is the size of the original hard drive. Upon executing, this boot code then sets the hard drive HPA to that size. For people unfamiliar with HPA, it tells the hard drive what size it should report itself to be. If you had put the hard drive in the machine blank, you'd see that the BIOS correctly reported its size. However, once you clone the old hard drive onto it and boot it, that funky MBR writes an HPA to the drive, telling it to report the old size, which it dutifully does.
The solution is as follows:
1. Remove the HPA with a utility like MHDD (Maysoft's Hard Disk Utility), which can be downloaded as a bootable CD. Other utilities provide this functionality, but I am most familiar with MHDD's implementation. Once you boot MHDD and select the drive, type "hpa" to launch the HPA utility. It will show you the native maximum addressable LBA, which you will then tell it to apply persistently (1), type in the native address, and confirm with y. It will say "done."
2. Reboot, but this time boot from the Windows XP CD. DO press a key to boot from the CD, when prompted. After it loads the text-mode Windows, select "R" to repair with the recovery console. Select your preferred keyboard layout if it isn't US, and select the Windows partition to log onto by number. You will need to know the Administrator password for the Windows installation. On many of these units there is none; simply press enter when prompted on these machines. If you don't know what it is, NTPASSWD is a great utility to clear them--do your own research on that one. Once you are logged in, type "fixmbr" then "fixboot" to replace Dell's weird bootloader with the standard Microsoft one. You will get a warning that the computer has a non-standard or invalid MBR......which we already knew, so tell it to go ahead and fix it. In spite of its dire predictions, I have never had fixmbr lose partitions, no matter how non-standard the MBR may be.
3. If you adjusted the partition smaller to make Windows boot, you can now expand it to fill the hard drive. Windows will boot normally, without that Dell bar or a BSOD.
If this helps you, please consider making a small donation to business [at} silverdollarsolutions.com via PayPal. I put in a lot of time solving this issue and writing it up, and it would be nice if people would chip in a little if this has been helpful to you.
92 views
Usually answered in minutes!
×