HP PAvillion ISSUES***LOCKED OUT

June 17, 2007 1:28 PM

My HP Pavillion dv4000 is not allowing me to log into the computer. It did this once before saying i lost my password and i had to have my ex do some trickery and it was fine. Now it is doing it all over again. This time I did not have a password..it has just locked me out completely.

I have tried putting in the recovery disk and system restore and stuff, but it is still asking for a password. The thing is the first time it happened a couple of months back i never forgot my password, i changed it and it was fine for 2 days...and then boom, it just crashes or something...

Now it is doing the same thing, i even went into the "f10" menu thing and tried some stuff, but nothing worked.

Anywho, there have been serious issues with this computer from day one, and now COMP USA is or have all ready closed down there doors in SoCal...
Thanks anyone who helps with this issue.

posted by eve28 to technology (9 comments total)

--hard disk password (locks the disk-- ianact-- most difficult to recover) --bios password (locks the bios and almost as hard to recover) --operating system password (if whole disk is not encrypted, easiest to recover data from) program password >>?
Any idea which kind of password you're up against?
posted by acro at 1:55 PM on June 17, 2007

It seems like you're having the same problem as my aunt's computer. I'm not completely sure, but I think that windows might have just locked up the account.

I ended up using this program which i put on a cd to reset her passwords and unlock the user

It's not completely user friendly, but if you're somewhat computer literate you should be able to figure out the basic commands. And if you do give it a shot and have some questions, feel free to ask me
posted by carpyful at 5:55 PM on June 17, 2007

It sounds like your windows is borked to hell. I would find someone to fix it and then do a total format/reinstall, NOT from the HP restore disks though. They always package too many helper and useless apps that end up screwing with your system.
posted by jammnrose at 6:06 PM on June 17, 2007

I'll second carpyful's suggested utility - it's a bootable CD that will unlock and remove passwords from any Windows account. This may be all you need to do.
posted by odinsdream at 6:46 PM on June 17, 2007

I am trying everything, but unfortunetly, i am trying to burn the file carpful's suggesting, but to no avail, my cousins computer won't even recogonize the cd...
I have no idea what type of password I am up against, Acro, because i never put a password on here.
I hate Compusa
posted by eve28 at 7:12 PM on June 17, 2007

Recommend 'Hiren's boot cd'-- [link]

[Download], burn image to cd-- boot the locked computer-- run xp password reset program-- that should be it. (The cd also has tools if it is a password set in the bios or hard drive, but these are much less likely to have been set accidentally).
posted by acro at 8:18 PM on June 17, 2007

Most Windows boxes, as bought from the store, will have a user account called Administrator, hidden (feebly) except in Safe mode, with no password.

If you boot into Safe mode (pound on F8 as the machine is booting up, then select Safe mode from the resulting menu) you should see Administrator as one of the users you can log on as.

If that works, use the User Accounts item in the Control Panel to reset the passwords for your other user accounts however you want.

If a password has in fact been set on the Administrator account (this is fairly rare, unless somebody knowledgeable has had something to do with your machine) then the password reset tools linked above are your next port of call.
posted by flabdablet at 12:40 AM on June 18, 2007

BTW, just in case you didn't already know this: to make the password reset CD, it's not sufficient just to use Windows's inbuilt CD burning facility to burn the .zip file you download onto the CD as a file. You will need to extract the .iso contained inside the .zip, then use something like Nero Express or ImgBurn to make the .iso into a CD.

.iso files are complete CD-ROM images, containing within themselves the necessary boot code and a bunch of other files. Burning a .iso to a CD-ROM as a file will generally do nothing useful, except maybe backup the .iso.

If you're using Nero Express, look for the "burn image to CD" function, not the "make data disk" function. If you're using "burn image" and you can't immediately find the .iso in the folder you extracted it to, change the file type dropdown from "Nero image files (.nrg)" to "All supported image types".
posted by flabdablet at 1:04 AM on June 18, 2007

All good points flb.
posted by acro at 7:36 AM on June 18, 2007