Hello everyone,

Been a while since i have been around here. The working/school part of life has gotten the best of me lately. However my Laptop is not making it any easier. I own a dell laptop. Latitude C510/C610. Thats the best info i can get to describe it. I have had it for over two months now, and two days ago, i shut it down to go to sleep. Next morning, I turned it back on and have been stuck at this screen forever, with this error message about entering a password, which i do not remember entering in the first place. Last week, it was running pretty slow, and i couldn't stop popups if my life depended on it, so i figured a spyware, however, i used Hijackthis to clean it up a bit. Ran well, but I would loose control every here and there like someone was controlling my pointer. It stopped, and all was fine and then i shut it off and have been getting this message ever since. Message is exactly as it is written below..


" This computer system.. #7s87m11, is protected by a password authentication system. You cannot acces the data on this computer without the correct password."

"Please type in the primary administrator password and press <ENTER>"


I do not recall entering any password for any administrator access, etc. This is the first time it has done this, and i am completely lost. I have a lot of important information and data on this laptop and i cannot afford to loose them. I even gave up and attempted to format it by inserting an Windows XP Cd that i own in to give it a whole new OS, because it is currently running on Windows 2000, and it would not pick up the cd or read it without this password. Is There anything i can do? I have hit all dead ends, and i know there are people here that know tons more than i do, please help me with this. Do you think I was hacked or i lost control of my laptop to someone else? If so, how is it still in effect when i am disconnected from the internet? Any help would be MUCH appreciated. Thank you all very much.