I have a laptop that I bought at a yard sale, it has a password on it, of course i don't know it. I want to clean the hardrive and reinstall WIN XP. I found that win NT doesn't have the BIOS on it.I have all the disk for XP. Can anyone help?

"...I found that win NT doesn't have the BIOS on it..." I'm not sure what yiou're saying here??? Re' your main query cleaning out the drive: You can use delpart.exe to totally clean out the drive; afterwhich you can reconfigure the drive afresh via '98 bootdisk utils; then run XP setup. Or after cleaning out the drive (with delpart) allow XP setup to reconfigure the drive etc... Or - not using delpart - simply boot via the XP CD (if system allows) or the 6 XP floppies (+ CD) and delete any/all partitions; then allow XP setup to recreate partitions and format etc. Or - again not using delpart - use '98 Fdisk util to remove any/all partitions. Then reconfigure the drive afresh as suggested above. If any ntfs area(s) on the drive, they will show up (in Fdisk) as non-dos partitions; delete them. '98 Fdisk may be the simplest way; XP setup the other- especially if no '98SE bootdisk? I guess you takes your choice? delpart at: http://hercules.lss.ksu.edu/download/MSSTUFF/index.htm http://www.mesich.com '98SE bootdisk (an image - get the version with CDROM drivers) at: http://www.bootdisk.com Download the image to a harddrive; expand the imge to a flopy; use that floppy. To use delpart: Boot with '98 bootdisk; at the a: prompt insert delpart floppy and run util; follow on screen prompts. You can also add the util to the '98 bootdisk and avoid a floppy change... Fdisk tutorial: http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q255/8/67.ASP It would be wise to create two partitions on the drive; Primary for OS/apps/utils and Extended for data. This isolates data from the OS etc. and allows a re-isntall (even a reformat if need-be) to (of) the Primary - without affecting data (unless one is unlucky/careless...). Your main problem may be accessing the CD as a boot up option; also can you can have both floppy and CDROM drive at the same time?

i have an external CD ROM drive....and when I installed all 6 win xp disk...when it gets to the 6th disk...it says that setup cannot find a CD-ROM drive. setup cannot continue . to quit press F3. the only options is to press F3.can anyone help...

You bought this laptop at a yard sale... It sounds "rather elderly..." Are you sure this laptop is even close to XP compliant??? It may well be that the best you can hope for is either NT (again) or '98 - in all probablility...? The external CDROM - is it one that came with the laptop originally - or is it a third-party add-on unit of another make/supplier?

well the CD-ROM drive says Toshiba....same as laptop, same color looks new