BIOS Password

you mean as in how often you can guess it before it locks you out?   not sure for that model, but you should always be able to guess again after a hard power cycle (as far as I know).

if you are the rightful owner, call dell and ask for a master password.  if you're not, enjoy the doorstop

Thanx, Nemesis... i am the rightful owner + have had my baby since birth about 7 years ago... got all mt service tag numbers n all that stuff, but now am livin in Spain, so tryin this way b4 get into international call charges...  The Spanish revenge was sweet from her as she collected some clothes as i spent 3 weeks in Norway...  By the way, wot is a "hard power cycle"?

Another matter u may b able 2 help with...  this is a business and personal computer that should not ever have been connected 2 other computers...  a downloaded Madonna was put onto the hard disk about 1 year ago...  since it runs a lot slower... says that the hard drives r runnin in MS-DOS backup mode...  have i had my drivers eaten, or somethin ???

To rebut that post:
1)  When you try wrong 3 times, you have to reboot to try again.
2)  The hard power thing is a reboot - the "three finger salute (control+alt+del) or powering off would do it.
3)  I'm with him on the Madonna thing...  bit from your next post I see it was a video.  My suggestion is to look at the mode the IDE channel is running in from the Device Manager - it should be DMA and not PIO.  If it is PIO and goes back to that after you change it to DMA and reboot, then the hdd is aging and should be replaced.

Hope this helps.

Well the Madonna video shouldn't have done anything- unless it was a virus or something and had malicious script embedded into it or something along those lines? I'm guessing you might've installed a plugin or codec to install it which wasn't very well programmed and inefficient. Your first step in correcting this might be to try antivirus and adware/spyware removal software?

As for your second problem battery life varies depending on what you are doing- tasks such as playing computer games, watching videos, cd-rom usage, etc.. use up a lot more power than simple word processing. If the battery capacity has seriously depleted over time, you should considering contacting Dell if still under warranty because the battery should be covered. Again this is something you'll need professional advice from Dell themselves upon.

It's a pleasure to try to help people out when others have helped me =]

EDIT: Seems I made a few mistakes on my last post... sorry about that ><

Message Edited by JaCe_88 on 12-21-2004 05:23 PM

I'm not that pro regarding this but what I think is;
1. When the password is attempted too many times you need to wait a specified period of time- I think its half an hour?
2. The hard power thing is something about waiting for the battery to run out (or deplete) I believe and then charging it up and then using it (I think this is similar to #1)
3. I'm not sure what Madonna is-

Best wishes-