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Thread: need help

  1. #1
    Junior Member
    Join Date
    Feb 2004
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    3

    need help

    I have just returned home after two years overseas and the computer I use to do a lot of my work on wont let me sign in
    it has locked me out. My OS is win xp pro. after the first three tries it locked me out. I have my original CD for the OS but it wont boot up to the CD and I am stuck. any assistance would be great.

  2. #2
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    Feb 2002
    Posts
    1,210
    it'll boot up off the cd when you set your bios boot order to cdrom first , then IDE 0 ..

    are you familar with getting into your bios ? usually you hit the delete key right after you first turn it on.. now we don't know if you're locked out of windows (forgot password) or you had set a password in the bios... so that info would help..

  3. #3
    Junior Member
    Join Date
    Feb 2004
    Posts
    3

    bios

    I have not set a password for bios, so I can get into the bios and set it to read the CD rom drive first.
    Now once it starts to read the cd will it ask me to reinstall windows ? and if so will it preserve the info I had at the time. please reply.
    Thanks for your reply. any help is greatly appreciated.

  4. #4
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    Feb 2002
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    1,210
    you should be presented with a choice of choosing repair.. and yes your files should still be there.

  5. #5
    Senior Member nihil's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2003
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    United Kingdom: Bridlington
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    17,188
    Hi,

    It is actually about 18 months since I had to do it on my one, but I believe that even if you choose to reinstall, it will only overwrite existing XP files unless you choose to format the HDD. Your data should be ok, just DON'T format.

    You have not used it for 2 years so you will not lose much in the way pf patches ..........that is the downside of a reinstall, especially on a 56.6 dial up!!!

    WARNING:

    Your machine is unpatched, and there are a lot of "network aware" worms floating around........you must get a firewall that stealths you from the net or you will be infected within minutes

    The free ZoneAlarm should do the job temporarily if you set security to "high", just burn it onto a CD and install before you go online.

    I believe that you can create a recovery disk that will "remember" the admin password, or at least get you in as admin. You might like to look into that, once you have got it going?

    Good Luck

  6. #6
    Junior Member
    Join Date
    Feb 2004
    Posts
    3
    thanks for the replies, I just looked them up and will try to do the reinstall tomorrow.
    I'll let you know how it went. If it goes OK yhen a thousand thanks, and if not I'll be back for more advice.
    Thanks and will post soon.

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