Phew! what a hectic few Days.
Laptop 1 is still running fine, despite the fact the shop did not just replace my 250Gb Hard drive with a 1Tb Hard drive, during the re-installation of the 'OS' they have installed 'Windows 7' replacing my previous 'Windows Vista Premium' which was very likable over 'Windows 7' as far as I was concerned, but '7' has crap photo editing software, so I had to download from the NET, 'Windows Live Photo Gallery 2009', much better!
I spent all night hacking into my own laptop to try and get past the forgotten password, a password that was in use when I purchased the second hand laptop and a password that expired one evening just as I was going out, so I quickly put in a new password and closed the laptop down for the night...yes of course I did not write it down, I was going out, far more important...
Anyway, after several unsuccessful downloads of certain 'Password Recovery' software packages and installing it on a CD-R disc, I finally found one that worked that could be installed on a 'Pen Drive' (this is just a memory card device that plugs into a USB Socket), and this is what you use to 'Boot' the computer, once you have got into the 'BIOS' by tapping one of the 'F Keys' repeatedly, then change the order of boot options to put the USB Drive first, the laptop will then open-up software on your 'Pen Drive' giving you access to the password section of the laptop and you can reset or leave it blank...
BLANK was what I wanted for sure!! after a few restarts and the Disc checking function deciding one of my Discs was corrupted and needed repairing, I was not too far from being able to start the laptop normally and see the Desktop, something I have not seen for a very long while and check to see what files and folders I have that can be copied over to my No.1 laptop (the one with new Hard drive etc), because the No.2 laptop was a very close duplicate of No.1 laptop, but sadly the most recent work was still missing, but at least I have something to work with and access to pictures for the forums.
Today was spent chasing other files and folders from another laptop (No.3), that I was letting my Father use for playing Solitaire and some NET surfing and a Windows XP Media Centre PC that also has some useful files and folders on board. This evening was spent doing the evening meal for the both of us and then searching everywhere for past username and passwords for some NET Accounts like 'Photobucket' and another Email account I used to use, then creating new Desktop shortcuts on both No. 1 and No.2 laptops.
Next task is to find yet another username and password for my 'Dropbox' account, as there may be some important files and /or folders stored there and if I'm lucky, when setting that up, I clicked the 'Auto Save to Dropbox' function so everything I have been doing upto the point of No.1 laptop crashing has gone into my 'Dropbox'...!
So there we have it, I am sure something else will crop up that may or may not interest you, but what I will just mention here...
FOR F***S SAKE BACK UP YOUR OWN COMPUTERS UNLESS YOU WANT TO GO THROUGH THE SAME STRESS AND HASSLE AS I HAVE...!
Ghosty.
ooh, 6 odd litres of grunt.