need help with used laptop

xcaliburfarm

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I just acquired a used laptop...toshiba satelitte M505 using windows vista home premium...and it came to me with two users listed on it. When I click on either one, I can open the programs, but when I try to make any changes like removing photos, docs, programs, etc, including system recovery, restore, dev. manager, etc, it prompts me to use the admin password for permission. Since I am not the one originally owning the computer and the commercial dealer I got it from doesn't know that info, I cannot get past the admin password prompts. I did go to set up and listed a password for security to boot and I still just get the prompt to enter that at startup, then when I go to next screen, it lists the same two users and I'm back at square one. Can anyone here suggest a way to clear this computer of previous user info and gain access? I would like to keep the windows and office and a couple other programs on it, but the other things could go. Help please. I want my grandson to have this computer and paid more than 300 for it. I don't want to think it is useless now. I realize I could take out the HD and use it as an external attached to my other laptop and might be able to work with it, but don't know that would do anything since I don't then know what to do to get past the admin password once I put it back into the toshiba again. Thanks for your suggestions, DC
 
Your best bet would be to reinstall windows on it, i'd recomend you purchase Windows7 Home premium and install that on it. Obviously you would lose any files that are on it (If you do a complete reinstall, to get rid of the original user accounts).
 
If you boot into Safe Mode, you could log into the Administrator account, but that's only provided you know the password. Then you could remove the accounts, since they weren't yours. Another thing would be to start over. I do believe the Toshiba recovery key is 0 or O, but I'm not sure.

Or you could get Windows 7, providing you're willing to fork a little more.
 
It goes to the screen where it tells me the HDD is locked and asking for the password (which I had been able to set from setup menu) then when I type it in, holding down the F8 key and hit enter after typing the password, it goes all the way through to the open screen of windows...no menu is given here. Now Best Buy techs tell me they can take five minutes if we bring them the computer and they can create a recover partition for me to bypass the password...don't know what they plan to do...wondering if there is something more I should try first.....
 
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