Laptop won't boot up.

matphil

When I first changed it to see if it would allow me to log in, it didn't, so I just changed it back to having no password. No it still won't let me change the boot order.

matphil

I can't seem to get anywhere with this so I thought I'd try the recovery partition. I have pressed Ctrl and F11 but it is not showing a recovery system just the same screen it shows on start up saying windows did not start properly.
How do I get onto the recovery partition, please.

[Deleted User]

matphil wrote: »

I can't seem to get anywhere with this so I thought I'd try the recovery partition. I have pressed Ctrl and F11 but it is not showing a recovery system just the same screen it shows on start up saying windows did not start properly.
How do I get onto the recovery partition, please.

Does this help?

matphil

Hi, thanks but that doesn't work either. It goes to the screen where it asks you to log in and I can't do that.

inearlygaveup

was the laptop new to you

matphil

Yes it was.

inearlygaveup

I was hoping that someone may have had it before you and had the password.

You have obviously done a lot of googling, did you try looking for Vista password reset.

What-to-do-if-you-forget-your-Windows-password

Windows Vista Password reset

Sorry I can't be of more help but I don't use windows anymore.
But as suggested before if the above doesn't help then a quick call to Dell is probably your best bet

Rabbir1

Have you tried changing the boot order via bios setup (f2).

matphil

Yes tried that but it still ends up going to the screen asking me to log in.
If I get hold of a copy of windows and re-install it do you think it would solve the problem.

Rabbir1

matphil wrote: »

Yes tried that but it still ends up going to the screen asking me to log in.
If I get hold of a copy of windows and re-install it do you think it would solve the problem.

Not sure what you mean!
Can you get to the bios setup page?
If you can, can you change the boot order to boot from cd first.
Then save changes and restart with the cd from post 2 in the drive.
If you cant get to the bios setup, how did you do it to change the password.

If you mean you did get to setup and changed to boot from cd first, then the CD may not have been made as bootable.

Re-installing windows wont be possible if you cant boot from a cd.