My mate got a laptop for xmas & now it wont boot up. When i try to boot up it says A disc read error occurred. Ive tried going into the bios but it says invalid password. He doesnt know the password & was wondering how to bypass this. The laptop came with Vista but im trying to install XP.
I don't know about bypassing the password but if you remove battery backup from mainboard (or some have an actual reset button )you will reset all the mainboard settings to defaults. And there is no password by default
Yeah, like Crab said, you'd need to remove the battery for a few seconds to reset the BIOS (which includes the password). However, you might have some trouble getting in there, because it's a laptop... It appears that the BIOS settings may have become corrupted, because there is no password by default, so resetting it that way may be the only way to fix it.
OK thanks guys. We eventually found out his BIOS password, but it seems his hard drive is damaged somehow. Its only a month old & comes up disc read error occurred so its getting sent back to the catalogue. Cheers anyway guys.
If it's a new laptop and you tried to install XP over Vista you might have a warrenty issue ?? Did you try doing a google search on "disc read error " ? Lots of stuff - may be bad HDD or could be boot sector issue. Maybe you are not installing XP correctly. just something to think about.
Something I didn't mention before: have you tried running a full ScanDisk on the harddrive? (ie install the HD in another computer then try a ScanDisk)
OK, i didnt get a chance to install Windows. I turned the laptop on & it said disc read error. I tried to boot up from disc & it loaded the drivers, & i got to the bit where you select install or repair Windows. But after that it said it couldnt detect a hard drive. I didnt try to put the hard drive into another machine. But cheers anyway guys.
