This may sound fishy, but it is NOT. I purchased a Dell laptop with XP pro at an auction of a bankrupt company. The problem is that it was connected to a network with Novell login and is password protected. I tried to get in through safe mode, but it still asks for a novell user name and password and a windows user name and password. Please help! my wife is yelling at me for buying something that doesn't work!

check the past posts several days back. there was someone with a similar problem and someone gave a link to a downloadable imagefile that you can burn to cd. then you boot to the cd and it will clear the passwords. it has been several days now! thinking last week.

In your situation it appears best course of action you can take (the easy way) is to purchase Windows XP CD at a local retail outlet. Before you head out to the store, are you sure BIOS is not also password-protected? If it is, it's a challenge to get into it in order to change the order of booting to XP CD. i_XpUser

here are a couple of things to try... first... if the NIC is a pcm/cia card, try removing the NIC. Novell will not ask for a login if it can't find a network card. second... if it is a internal/intetrated NIC, try disabling it in the BIOS. Once again, novell will not ask for a login if it can't find the NIC. Also, try logging into the 'workstation only' option (if avail) at the Novell login and use Administrator w/ no password and see if it lets you in. If you don't have the main system administrator password, basicall yer screwed and have to reinstall windows. g/l scootr

Yes the BIO is password protected. I went into setup and I couldn't change the password without the original password. Ithought that if I were in safe mode, that i didn't need passwords???? I have done this once before and it worked??/ Hmmm.....

If the laptop were desktop, you can kill BIOS password by first taking out CMOS battery for several minutes then put it back. I am not too familiar with Laptops so I don't know if you can do it. If you're not confident enough to do it, I suggest you visit a local repair shop. i_XpUser

I don't know if it will work, but.. a: try to enter password as 0000 b: reset bios c: remove the battery for a few hours not sure, but it might reset everything.