Help me, obi-wan technobi....

[ffutures]

I just bought a really cheap netbooky sort of computer on eBay - a Packard Bell Easynote XS, sold as non-working, I suspect that the hard disk is dead. This appears to be a rebadged Via Nanobook. It doesn't have wonderful reviews but it's one of the smallest XP-capable netbooks I've seen, and I suspect will be pretty fast with some sort of Linux replacing Windows, and possibly a flash card instead of hard disk.





The trouble is that I can't figure out how to get into the BIOS to review its settings and do a little troubleshooting before I try to open the case, I just get a password screen then it locks me out after three failures.

Does anyone have any experience with these, or suggestions on likely passwords? All of the password sites suggest "bell9" as Packard Bell's default but it doesn't actually work, I've also tried 'password', '911', 'via" "pegasus" (appears to be some sort of model number on the case), "1234" etc. etc.

All suggestions etc. VERY gratefully received.

Comments

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

Have you tried "Admin" and/or "Administrator"? (Widely used default passwords for such things.)

Otherwise, I think it's a case of opening the back up first, finding the contacts/jumper/whatever required to re-initialise the BIOS, doing so, and trying again. You may need to google quite deeply to dig up information on the motherboard.

It might be quicker/safer to just find a replacement/temporary hard drive from somewhere, and test your theory directly.

Being a netbooky-type-thing, it presumably doesn't have a CD drive you could try booting from to run an diagnostic suite? You could try plugging a USB CD drive and booting from that, but if the BIOS is set not to boot from such a thing then that won't get you anywhere, and we're back to the problem of cracking the BIOS open... =:o\

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I've found instructions on dismantling it - looks like a bit of a bugger to get at the battery backup, which I assume is how you clear it. Getting at the drive is pretty easy though, tried it already.

I'll try those passwords tonight, also I think a bootable Linux memory stick, see if that works. But if it doesn't I'm now wondering how I get an OS onto a 2.5" drive without having to buy an adapter for that as well as a drive.

The trouble is my skills and tools are all geared towards desktop machines, don't really have much laptop experience, and I think I may have underestimated the problems.