A friend of mine gave me a Advent Laptop he had a problem with. It was an ex shop display one that used to have shop software running. Anyway, when he brought it they unlocked it for him and removed anything of theirs. It has been running fine for months, then last week it just froze, so he switched it off. Now when it starts it jumps up with 'Enter Password' Now he has not set one anyway. So the question is what is this password ? I am guessing it is a Power on Password or BIOS related anyway. Either way i can not get past it. It will not let me into BIOS, so can not alter boot sequence to goto DVD first. I have removed CMOS battery for 12 hours and its not helped. There are no jumpers on the Motherboard, so thats not an option.
diogenysos: Nope it says at bottom of screen <f2> to enter setup & <f12> to enter boot menu.
<f2> does show you set up, but as it does, the 'Enter Password' box comes up again <f12> does not appear to do anything <f8> will not work well in fact i have tried all of them and the other normal ones Esc, Ins etc....
diogenysos: thats one of the sites i have tried and the different Passwords i have tried is crazyyyyyyyy
I do not think in the end its a BIOS Password, its either a Power on one OR something that they may have installed when it was in the shop as a display
i am running out of suggestions now. just one more hint: depending on the mainboard it may take up to a whole year until the power/data gets lost after the removal of the battery. maybe you can find a nice place on your shelf to store that laptop for the next months...