Re: Administrator password required, but I never set one!

"If I took my hard drive out and put it in a case and hooked it up to my
laptop, could I run a virus scan on it that way?"

Yes - and that may be your best course of action now. (Of course, your laptop needs to have updated virus definitions.) You should also check for other types of malware.

"Would I risk getting the virus (if there is one) on my laptop?"

No - At least, not so long as your laptop has a recent version of a competent antivirus (and antispyware) program installed with updated definitions.

---
Ted Zieglar
"Backup is a computer user's best friend."

Subguy wrote:
Well, as I mentioned in my first post, I cannot enter Safe mode. When I tried again just now, by tapping F8, I got a "Keyboard failure" message. F12 is the boot screen command on my system.

I have some floppies that I made from AVG. I tried one the other day and it didn't do anything, but I'll try again. You think it might be a virus? I was wondering that myself. Have you heard of this happening to anyone else recently?

I just tried putting in the AVG rescue disk again, and I get the message "Remove disks or other media. Press any key to restart." Then, "Strike F1 to retry boot, F2 for setup utility".

I didn't see a "last known good" option anywhere.

If I took my hard drive out and put it in a case and hooked it up to my laptop, could I run a virus scan on it that way? Would I risk getting the virus (if there is one) on my laptop?

Al

"Ted Zieglar" wrote:

Restart the computer and keep tapping the F8 key. This will get you to the boot options screen. (It's all text.) You can try the 'last known good' option and/or, if you can boot into Safe Mode with networking I would update my virus program and run a full system scan.

Otherwise, if you have an up-to-date rescue CD from your antivirus program, I would boot the computer from that.

---
Ted Zieglar
"Backup is a computer user's best friend."

Subguy wrote:
I tried to restart my computer yesterday, but when the computer rebooted, instead of going to Windows, I got a black screen with a cursor line blinking in the upper left corner. I tried using the Windows Recovery Console, but it asked for an administrator password. I don't remember ever setting an administrator password, and I'm quite sure I never did. I tried just hitting <Enter>, but that didn't work.

I am not able to get into Windows Safe Mode. I can't even type any commands while on the black screen.

Any suggestions on how to resolve this issue? Is this a Windows password or a BIOS password that is being requested?

I am running a Dell Dimension 8250, with Windows XP SP2. The computer is almost four years old. I replaced the hard drive a couple of months ago (moving the crashed one to secondary position to access data files from it), and have had no problems until this happened.

Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks,

Al
.

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