user account was not really local

[alex912]

I have a dell latitude c500 laptop. it used to belong to my mother's work. I removed it from her work's Active Directory and put her in a work group for her house, after checking to see that her user account was local i rebooted. after rebooting, her "local" account was no longer valid. she does not know the administrator account password. i attempted to use a linux application to reset the admin password but was faced with a dell login authentication program. it will not boot from the cd drive, will not load the boot device list, nor will it load bios. also i don't have a flopy drive for this laptop.

thanks

 

[DylanThompson]

Sounds like you might be out of luck. My only suggestion would be to try and locate the BIOS battery. If you can remove the laptop from power, remove the main battery and then remove the BIOS battery, you should be able to reset the whole BIOS and get access to the boot options etc.

Some laptops you can get access to the BIOS battery under the keyboard.

Otherwise, take it to a dell service centre and have them reset it.

I like children. If they're properly cooked.
-- W.C. Fields

 

[sch911]

Dell laptops have no end user Bios PW reset capability. The only way to unlock them is to get the master password from Dell mobile support. They will want you to prove that you are the rightfull owner before they'll give you the PW. I have read about some 3rd partys that can also crack the PW but have no additional infor for them...

 

[alex912]

dell had the default password, thanks for your help