Acer Aspire One Windows 7 home basic

Hi, I have been trying to fix an Acer Aspire One for a friend. She has set a user password and forgot/lost it. An administrator password was not set up, so no joy there. When I look in the bios it says 'hdd password frozen'. This is a nearly new netbook, no cd rom and no Windows 7 Home basic disc, just usb ports.Any ideas please ??
Thx

 

Try this method

http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntucat/resetwindowspassword/

The tutorial is a bit dated having been written in 2010. I've not tried this, however according the comments at the bottom of the tutorial it works with Vista, so it 'should' work with Win 7.

If you are not familiar with Ubuntu consider these points:

- You may want to download an older version of Ubuntu, probably 10.04.4 LTS Lucid Lynx. That version would have been current when the tutorial was written.

- As a Windows user you will find 10.04.4 close enough to Win XP from a user's viewpoint that it shouldn't require too much of a learning curve. 11.x and beyond are very different from Win any flavor, the learning curve will be steep.

- Depending upon which Acer you have you may have to dig around on this forum and others to find a few tips on getting Ubuntu to run.

- The Ubuntu web sites have instructions on how to install Ubuntu on a USB stick. I don't know how much luck you'll have finding instructions specific to 10.04.4 because it is an older release.

- Create a USB stick with persistence. A simple bootable Ubuntu USB stick will not 'remember' anything between sessions. All downloads, files etc are kept in RAM and disappear when you shut down. Persistence will give you limited ability to keep files, downloads and installed software. Google around and you'll find several web sites that will help you. One that I like is http://www.pendrivelinux.com/ it will help you set up a Ubuntu bootable USB stick from a Win computer.

- Skills developed in using bootable USB sticks will come in very handy when faced with future computer problems.