my laptop doesn't recognise me

[Ed Fenwick]

Aloha,

I have set myself as the administrator of a hand me down Dell laptop. It shows that I am the administrator but if I try to run eraser it says I don't have authorization to run this. Also it calls itself "Vinnie's computer" Vinny was my brother in law who owned it before he died. It works fine but I would like it to know it is mine! Also I want to erase data as opposed to deleting it. What should I do?

Thanks in advance Ed

 

[Rodney Leary]

Dell usually has a recovery partition to set back to factory condition. XP Dells usully required hitting CTRL + F11 immediately after the Dell logo during system start-up to load this recovery. Of course that could have been erased at some point- but it's your best bet.

 

[Richard L]

Most Dell computers also come with operating system discs as well as a disk with all the drivers and any preloaded software. If the operating system was not changed you can just install the operatng CD and press F12 when the Dell logo appears and it will bring you to the boot menu and you can select the option to Boot from the CD and you can reinstall the operating system, then load the drivers and software. You will also be given an opportunity to rename the machine and set the Administrator password.



You will also want to go to Microsoft and catch up on all the Windows Service Packs and updates.



...Rich