Friends Laptop

[Captain Pooka]

Alright, my friend gave me a laptop. its a Satellite Pro from Toshiba, P200. Has the fingerprint scan and everything. He forgot his BIOS Pass and it didn't recognize his scan. I got past his BIOS pass to the Vista Log on screen. It recognized his fingerprint but did not log him on, it just sits there. He doesn't know his pass to log on.

I have a windows XP cd I'm trying to install.. just reformat the whole thing (he doesn't hav e the recovery cd) Well, XP does it's thing then when it comes time to install it says no HDD could be found. But I see on the boot menu, when I put boot from cd, that there is a hdd there. And I can get to vista log on... the vista OS.. so I know it detects the hdd.

Alright, no getting around that. The laptop has two slots for hard drives, I tried it in the other. It is SATA, so I can't use my previous IDE laptop hdd.

Naturally, I tried sticking it in my desktop to format it and install windows, then just put it in the laptop. Well, on an sata laptop hdd it has more than a little connector, it has a big one next to it and my cable doesn't have the big thing. I guess that's why my desktop didn't have another hdd. (yes, yes, I did try it anyways...)

Any ideas?

 

[Austinn1]

Can you get into safe mode on Vista? or did you erase Vista?

 

[drumthrasher]

Can you get into safe mode on Vista? or did you erase Vista?

I would try to go into Safe Mode as Austinn just said. He didn't erase it either or else he wouldn't even be at the logon screen.

 

[Austinn1]

Hm.. Good Point Drumthrasher. Guess I shold read more right?
In safe mode, You can get rid of the password or change it.

 

[Captain Pooka]

I've tried that.. last night actually. I can't get in to safe mode without the password in the first place.

And what about the HDD? This is a free copy of XP I got from my workplace, a co worker made copies (Legal ), could it be something wrong with the CD?

 

[J03]

Dont install XP to the Hard drive through your computer - It proberbly wont work. When installing XP, you might need to press a key to select some swanky drivers for the hard drive controller. I will have a read for you, to see if i can get the drivers..

OK, I've had a look. Basically, you need to go into the Bios, and turn on SATA Compatablity mode.

If that Option isnt there, then you need to download:
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Det...&OSFullName=Windows* XP Professional&lang=eng

You'll need a USB Floppy drive, but it Should install the hard drive controller stuff that you need. Basically, you pop the disk in the drive, plug it into the USB port of your computer, and then whilst installing XP, press F6 when It asks you if you want to specify additional storage drivers (or somthing).

It's basically a message at the bottom of the screen that appears during the first 30 seconds of the files loading.

 

[Captain Pooka]

lol, I just read the "if the option isn't there" part..

{ And how do you change the sata compatability within the bios? I can't find anything like that...}

I don't have a floppy drive, can I use a jump drive?
Ah, I do see "Built in HDD1 status - Clear"

It didn't say that yesterday, I believe it had the name.. or did it? I just unhooked the hdd from my desktop and put it back in the laptop, so maybe something happened there/.



Hm, but on the boot menu it has the hdd there. No idea what's going on.

As I said, it has two hdd spaces. Now on the main bios thing it aslo says I have a hdd in my first space.

 

[J03]

It's because XP doesnt have the driver.

Some BIOS'es might not have it... And you MIGHT be able to use a jumpdrive, but It's not officially supported.

 

[dude_se]

you could download a program that resets the password and burn it to a disc (cant really help you here though).