I recently aquired 2 laptops from my Brother who passed away earlier this month. One is a Dell with Windows XP and the other is a very small blue Acer which I don't know much about...though I do believe it has windows on it as well.
I do not have the passwords for Windows on the Dell or the BIOS password on the Acer. I don't want to erase the info on the computers because I am hoping there are some photos on them that I could save. Is there any way to get these passwords or by pass them some way without erasing the hard drives?
If there isn't...can I just reload windows on the Dell and start over?
I can't get into the Acer at all so not sure how I would go about reloading software on it. I didn't find any CDs so I don't have any back up cd's or anything.
I'm sorry to here about your brother. Probably the easiest way would be to try and recover the passwords here's one link Recover passwords and Toms download, these are taken from the 'sticky post' at the top of this board Useful links and mobo drivers. As you can see there are a few to choose from.
Here are further reading on resetting passwords on a Acer and for the Dell. You could of course try the 'backdoor' method describes in these sections first.
Resetting Passwords 
Linear Mode
