No Admin Password or CD Boot...

[Russell]

My girlfriend's dad received a laptop from work that is
rather old, but still functions fairly well. However,
when her father died, they had no way of finding out the
administrator password. Luckily the computer was set to
log in automatically. Somehow a friend of mine was able
to install Windows 2000 on the computer.

Now, the computer is asking for an Administrator password
to log on. Nobody knows it. So I tried to boot from a
CD, figuring I could try some of those programs to crack
the pw...

The computer isn't booting from a CD. The laptop is also
so old that there is no floppy drive. So here I have a
computer that won't boot from anything and that I can't
log into. Is there any way to salvage the machine? I'd
call MS, but I'm not paying them a ton of money to tell
me "you need to purchase our Microsoft program again".

Any idea what to do?

 

[Ken Schaefer]

Did you change the BIOS settings to that the laptop will boot from the CD
first, rather than from the hard disk first?

Cheers
Ken

: My girlfriend's dad received a laptop from work that is
: rather old, but still functions fairly well. However,
: when her father died, they had no way of finding out the
: administrator password. Luckily the computer was set to
: log in automatically. Somehow a friend of mine was able
: to install Windows 2000 on the computer.
:
: Now, the computer is asking for an Administrator password
: to log on. Nobody knows it. So I tried to boot from a
: CD, figuring I could try some of those programs to crack
: the pw...
:
: The computer isn't booting from a CD. The laptop is also
: so old that there is no floppy drive. So here I have a
: computer that won't boot from anything and that I can't
: log into. Is there any way to salvage the machine? I'd
: call MS, but I'm not paying them a ton of money to tell
: me "you need to purchase our Microsoft program again".

 

[sgopus]

On a new installation the admin password is blank
just hit enter.