:cry: I've broken my laptop

[lil'missleadfoot]

I've got an old Viglen laptop that's done me proud for 3 years but I tried to get clever with it.

Whilst re-partitioning the HDD I inadvertently set it to boot from an un-formatted partition.

All is not lost! - I thought, I'll nip into the BIOS and change the boot order - alas! So swine put a password on to quietboot99 so I can't get in.

Does ant body have any ideas? I thought that I might be able to change a jumper on the m/b to reset the password on the BIOS but the Viglen site is st - what can I do?

>>> Edited by lil'missleadfoot on Monday 9th June 19:54

[BadBoy Bakewell]

I've got an old ZX81 that's done me proud for 13 years but I tried to get clever with it.

Whilst re-partitioning the 16k RAM pak I inadvertently set it to boot from an un-formatted partition.

I can't play Jet Set Willy or Daley Thompson's decathlon now.

Help.

I think it could be down to the volume on the tape recorder, twiddle the leads a bit & turn the volume up.

That should sort it.

Chris

[Mr E]

There's usually a back door into the bios.

Smart use of google should turn up a site that may help....

[Mr E]

www.uktsupport.co.uk/reference/biosp.htm

might help.

You're not clear what bios the system has, so I can't be of more assistance....

[DevDog]

most systems have a jumper that can be changed to reset the password .... the answer is out there

[smeagol]

If you can't find the jumper then there is another way. You can unplug the battery and leave it for at least 30 minutes. Put the battery back in and you should find its dropped back to default settings and no password.

You should find tha the battery is calculator type and easy to disconnect.

[annodomini2]

unplug both batteries, the main one and the bios backup (usually the size of a 10p coin). and leave for 30mins

set it in the bios to boot from a floppy to reassign the active partition.

[lil'missleadfoot]

Mr E said: There's usually a back door into the bios.

Smart use of google should turn up a site that may help....

As a password has been set manually I cannot use a backdoor password - I've tried!

It's PhoenixBios btw

[lil'missleadfoot]

smeagol said: If you can't find the jumper then there is another way. You can unplug the battery and leave it for at least 30 minutes. Put the battery back in and you should find its dropped back to default settings and no password.

You should find tha the battery is calculator type and easy to disconnect.

I'm off to remove batteries - back in a while!