Dell Laptops
I'm no fan of Dell, either. I own a Dell home computer that I've had for over six years, and it still runs fine, but I wouldn't buy anything else built by Dell because of all the "proprietary" parts they slap into their equipment. Last year I built my own computer and I'm quite happy with it.
The laptop I have is not mine. In fact, I've never owned a notebook computer. My son-in-law picked it up from the university where he works (a five-year-old Dell Latitude CPtS). It was going to be tossed into the dumpster and they just gave it to him. I offered to help him get into it, not knowing what a pain in the a** it would be. Turns out it was loaded with passwords (Primary Password, Administrator Password, HDD Password Lock, and Disabled BIOS). I was about ready to do the EEPROM trick before I discovered how to get "LatitudePW.exe" to work.
I spent many hours combing the internet for info, taking the notebook apart (to reset the CMOS battery -- which is underneath the palmrest -- before I realized that would not work due to the NVRAM chip), etc., etc. So, FYI to anyone who is interested, the LatitudePW.exe -- which only works with the tag ending in D-35B -- will give you not only a Primary (User) Password, but will also unlock the HDD if you type in those characters exactly as they appear on the "HDD Password Enter" screen. When I typed in the HDD Password, it permanently disabled the hard drive password. Unfortunately, once I got into the BIOS I was unable to change any settings because an Administrator password had been typed in (Administrator can disable the BIOS, which they had). After some more web surfing, I finally discovered that you have to enter the Primary Password (the Master obtained from LatitudePW.exe) and then, rather than just striking Enter, hold the Control button down while striking the Enter key twice. That wiped both the Primary and Administrator Passwords at once, which also enabled the BIOS configuration.
Anyway, now I'm waiting for a Dell diskette drive with external hook-up cable I bought on Ebay, since the notebook only has a CD-Rom drive. The hard drive had been wiped, so I'll have to install a copy of Win 98SE, drivers, etc. I was going to ask my son-in-law if he would like to trade something for the notebook (I just wanted it for typing and web browsing), but now that I've been messing with it for a while, I realize I don't like the feel of the keyboard -- it's too cramped.
All in all, it's been a learning experience (which I'd rather not repeat, thank you). If anyone has any questions about this particular type of notebook, I'd be glad to offer you whatever help I can over the forum.
Cheers!