[Steve59]

I restore houses and I found an old laptop Dell bistro 1000 with Windows vista home premium. In comes on but there is no way I would know a log in password. How can I clear the thing and make it work for me? Or is that possible? I am not PC savy

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Hi Steve59, and welcome to our forums.

 

First you need to do some "legal work", you need to establish if you have any rights to the computer in question, as in a lot of countries and legal systems merely "finding" a computer whilst restoring a house provides no ownership or title to the computer or it's contents.

 

It might be best to contact the owner of the computer and request the password from them.... this may be difficult but you should use your best endeavours to establish who the rightful owners are of the computer and its data contained within. In the meantime in a lot of countries the legal system requires you to protect and care for the computer in an appropriate way....

 

Assuming you have established the rightful owners of the computer and have received agreement from them that you may "take it over" ( best to get it in writing) if you get the password from them then you could proceed but with utmost caution.... As you don't know what data the computer holds or what the previous user had put on it.... some stuff is illegal and could lead you straight to jail merely for possessing it, so maybe a factory restore would be a wise move. ( it clears from immediate view all the data and Vista system files etc., You will need the Dell DVD restore discs to do this, if you don't have these then its sometimes possible to buy them from Dell or alternatively you could buy the Vista installation disc and install Vista anew.... however be advised that Vista is in its last year of support from Microsoft so is not really a long term solution.

 

An other alternative is to install a fresh copy of Linux ( which is free to download or and install and this may be a wise step.

 

Post back if you have any queries or need amplification on any of this....

 

Just in case you were thinking of asking for assistance in breaking or cracking the existing password from us , then this is something that we do not do.

Regards

paws

[paws]

Hi Steve59, and welcome to our forums.

 

First you need to do some "legal work", you need to establish if you have any rights to the computer in question, as in a lot of countries and legal systems merely "finding" a computer whilst restoring a house provides no ownership or title to the computer or it's contents.

 

It might be best to contact the owner of the computer and request the password from them.... this may be difficult but you should use your best endeavours to establish who the rightful owners are of the computer and its data contained within. In the meantime in a lot of countries the legal system requires you to protect and care for the computer in an appropriate way....

 

Assuming you have established the rightful owners of the computer and have received agreement from them that you may "take it over" ( best to get it in writing) if you get the password from them then you could proceed but with utmost caution.... As you don't know what data the computer holds or what the previous user had put on it.... some stuff is illegal and could lead you straight to jail merely for possessing it, so maybe a factory restore would be a wise move. ( it clears from immediate view all the data and Vista system files etc., You will need the Dell DVD restore discs to do this, if you don't have these then its sometimes possible to buy them from Dell or alternatively you could buy the Vista installation disc and install Vista anew.... however be advised that Vista is in its last year of support from Microsoft so is not really a long term solution.

 

An other alternative is to install a fresh copy of Linux ( which is free to download or and install and this may be a wise step.

 

Post back if you have any queries or need amplification on any of this....

 

Just in case you were thinking of asking for assistance in breaking or cracking the existing password from us , then this is something that we do not do.

Regards

paws