I bought a (used)Gateway notebook(450SX4), but it has passwords. It had belonged to a woman who basically never used it- I bought it from her husband and no one can remember the Passwords. My other computers run 2000PRO and I want to install the same OS over the XP onm the notebook.

I cannot get the CDrom to boot. I even replaced the cd/dvd drive, thinking it was faulty. I also bought a password recovery disk from eBay- thinking that maybe the passwords blocked even its own OS' destruction. I have changed the priority of boot devices in the BIOS. I have done all these things in various combos, but...

One odd thing is that SOMETIMES a differen menu will come up, but it goes away quickly-

I am stumped. The 2000PRO pack I bought is new, was blisterpacked, unopened.

HAAALP!

I've got two options for you but would just prefer you try this Bootable CD Guide since you have other computers, you could get the cd and copy it to your hard drive, then run nero and follow that Boot CD guide, you also might wanna find a "boot.ima" file, as this will be what it boots from. The other desperate option you could try(only, if only the first one doesn't work) is you could put your hard drive on one of your other computer, and load it up and go into Win explorer, go to my computer, find your hard drive you just inserted, then right click>format, then you wouldn't have to install over xp

Hope that helped!

Another problem could be in the BIOS. You might have your BIOS set up so It looks at the hard drive for an OS before it looks at the CD drive. You need to look for something like Boot Priority. I personally would have it at FDD->CD ROM->HDD, or something similar. You just need to have your CD ROM ahead of your HDD.

the_guy