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Resolved Question

Found HP Laptop in garbage, please help.

Jan 30, 2014 4:01AM PST

Hello all,

My family rents apartments and some rooms to students in Flushing. One student recently moved out and had thrown out a considerable amount of stuff. As it looked like he'd just thrown out the contents of his room I decided to look through the garbage. in it was a very new looking HP laptop. It turned on but the screen was shattered. I'm guessing he must of stepped on it as the screen lights up but looks like a lava lamp.

Anyway I decided to plug it in to my TV using the HDMI port and low and behold, it worked! He must have stepped on it, saw the screen was broken, and decided he'd rather buy a new one than spend the $180 or so to replace it. I on the other hand am willing to shell out the cost of a new screen except for one thing, its password protected.

Seeing as I'm mostly a Mac user (Be nice) I'm not really sure what to do. I don't want any of his personal information. In fact I'd rather wipe everything and restore it. It's running Windows 8 and other than the screen seems to be working fine, as far as I can tell.

So what are my options? Is there a way for me to get in to command line using an external display and use a command to delete his user profile and delete the password? I've already restarted holding down the shift key but when I choose command line it doesn't display on my TV.

As far as I can tell the computer is a new HP Pavilion 15 z n 200 with an AMD processor.

Discussion is locked

mcapanelli has chosen the best answer to their question. View answer

Best Answer

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Wondering
Jan 30, 2014 4:16AM PST

if you could get to the restore partition and using a flash drive, create a new HP factory restore option? Otherwise, perhaps you could call HP and order one using the model and serial number of the laptop...that would wipe the drive and restore it to factory default installation programs info.

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Answer
The LCD here isn't too much.
Jan 30, 2014 4:23AM PST

About 75 bucks and there are YouTube videos on replacement. Once in a while you find folk trying to do without the LCD and losing far too much time on the project. Say nice things to them but wait for them to think it over.
Bob

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Password protected.
Jan 30, 2014 5:10AM PST

Easily solved with NTPASSWD.

Dafydd.

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(NT) True and the latest version fixes cracks.
Jan 30, 2014 7:35AM PST
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I meant.
Jan 30, 2014 8:11AM PST

After the screen is fixed Bob you devil.

Dafydd.

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Or it repairs the cracks with software.
Jan 30, 2014 8:39AM PST
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Bob, EUFI isn't an issue here?
Jan 30, 2014 8:21AM PST

I confess to zero experience with EUFI and vast ignorance on the subject. But if this laptop came with Windows 8 pre-loaded, wouldn't it come with EUFI? I thought you said you couldn't boot from a CD or DVD if it did? What am I missing here? (Probably a lot! Grin )

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EUFI vs. UEFI
Jan 30, 2014 10:11PM PST

For new we fish around in the BIOS for ways to disable secure boot and enable Corporate Stable Mode or "Legacy" to boot NTPASSWD and see if that helps.

The number of hoops you jump through have increased it seems.
Bob