Locked out of Harddrive

[MonKENy]

So I think the PC at work has a corrupted windows, I want to run the repair but when i do it asks for an admin password. No one has an admin password for this, its an OLD machine. Any ideas on how to get around this problem? Really do NOT want to have to re-install windows because everything is networked and our main IT/network guy is of no help.

I should mention that I cant get into windows at ALl. It loops to the windows didnt start correctly screen no matter how I try to get in, safe mode, debug, everything.

Thanks

 

[Bubbaleone]

Being a networked business environment it would be wise to very clearly communicate the problem to the IT department, how it impacts your ability to perform your work, and let them do their work.

 

[MonKENy]

its not that easy, our it is less than helpful. I basically have to do it on my own. Also they dont have the password either.

 

[denis280]

To reset Bios you have to do a CMOS. this will erase the password.but i would let the IT department do the job.you could make things worst.

 

[MonKENy]

ok let me go into better detail.

I know its either a hard drive or windows problem because I pulled the drive and put it into my machine. heres the wierd part, If I opened it like it was a slave drive it would show up and I could access the file. If I try to boot into the drive it goes into the boot loop. This makes me believe its a windows problem.

When I try to use a windows disk to repair it asks for a password on the hard drive..NOT bios. its not the bios thats locked its the physical drive. I need an admin password. I have all administrator passwords, they dont work. This hard drive pre dates our IT people so they dont have a password either. now onto our IT guy

We are trying to get out from under him, he doesnt get on top of our issues in any thing even resembling a timely manner, the only reason hes still on staff is because he sold us a cisco phone system and we cant afford to hire anyone else to get the thing up and running. Its taken him 4 months to do a job he says he can do in 3 days. Hes slow, he always has an excuse as to why something doesn't work. He tries to act like we don't know what we are doing or that we are wrong even though we can show him point blank its the system that not working, all in all he sucks. I think its because we are a VERY small company (two offices) and he waaay under charged us and so he brushes us off for his "high paying" clients. Hes not stupid I just think he doesn't really care about us.

So I have been taking care of most of our day to day needs because If I call him it will be days if not weeks for a response. I just need an alternative to get this drive unlocked, not advice on "letting our IT guy do it" If that was a viable option I wouldn't be wasting my time trying to do this. If I have to reformat everything and just do local profiles that fine. This comp is so damn old its not even funny. Worse case scenario I copy local files from it when its loaded as a slave and then format and drop the files back on. I don't want to do this but if I have to than oh well. He can fix it later but that's my LAST option

 

[ch33zw1z]

Give something like Hiren's boot cd or Bart's PE a shot. Booting to one of those will give you chkdsk /f or /r options.

What is the computer's make and model.

 

[MonKENy]

its a Dell dimension E510 running windows xp media center edition, i dont know the specs on it I think its running 2gig of RAM though. here

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/dim5150/en/sm/specs1.htm

We upgraded the ram I belive.

 

[Steltek]

Is the password causing the problem a Windows Administrative account password? If so, I wonder if you could use a Offline Windows Password & Registry Editor boot CD to reset all of the passwords on the hard drive?

http://pogostick.net/~pnh/ntpasswd/bootdisk.html

 

[MonKENy]

I honestly dont know. I have the administrator passwords for this PC and it doesnt seem to work for that. Ill try your way this weekend.

 

[Steltek]

I honestly dont know. I have the administrator passwords for this PC and it doesnt seem to work for that. Ill try your way this weekend.

To be sure you don't mess anything up, you might want to clone the hard drive and experiment with the clone.

 

[denis280]

Contact Dell. They will tell you how to remove password protection but they will probably require proof of ownership.

 

[bruceb]

Look at this link .. it may be of help:

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/dim5150/en/sm/syssetup.htm

 

[Steltek]

Look at this link .. it may be of help:

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/dim5150/en/sm/syssetup.htm

You know, I had an E510 for several years but had completely forgotten that it has a password reset jumper on the motherboard. I don't know if it would make a difference in this case, but it wouldn't seem that it could hurt anything by trying it.

 

[Topweasel]

It's not a Hard Drive password. If it was it wouldn't work as a secondary drive. Its not a BIOS or system password because if it was you either would have to worry about it, or it would come up at post.

In this case it is the original Administer password, created at installation of Windows. There are a few discs that you can boot to that will let you change that password. One was listed above. One I have used but can be hard to find is ERD Commander. The maker of that got sucked up by Microsoft and its now part of some tool package for MS professionals. That said you can still find the old ISO out there somewhere.