"After 20 yrs here I think I finally killed one,lol"
I have an old dell ins 15 3500 series. Was running fine. I gave it to my friend who promptly lops passwords etc and somehow it is not what I set it up to me. She gave it back to me as she is totally lost on it. Anyhow, as I could not for the life of me get into it, I was simply going to reset windows with my USB adaptor i have win 10 installed onto a micro SD. I have used this for several pc over 3 yrs and it is perfect. So initial issue- it will start to install and then i get the partitions but they all tell me they are GBT and I can't install onto them. I figure no biggie, it is a boot setup error I made in getting it ready . SO i go into setup and it tells me i need admin password- NEVER run into this before, seriously. I use no pw whenever possible as noone uses my pc's but this was not mine to begin with so who knows. So after 3 attempts i am now locked out of everything and can do nothing at all. I assume i truly just rendered my first pc useless?? It is 6 yrs old, a spare, not a biggie but I hate to give up. Thanks Guys!!
#1. "RE: After 20 yrs here I think I finally killed one,lol" In response to kittenmueller (Reply # 0)
Boot from your Windows 10 installation drive. At the blue screen where you choose what to do, press Shift + F10 to bring up a command prompt. Then you can follow the steps on this website.
The bottom half of this page shows the commands to wipe all the partitions on a disk at once. After you have deleted the partitions, you should be able to install Windows 10 just like you would on a brand new drive.
Behind every good computer... is a jumble of wires 'n stuff.
#4. "RE: After 20 yrs here I think I finally killed one,lol" In response to therube (Reply # 3)
Well.... Did that just fine. But now It will not boot with the usb at all. Gives the usb option in setup. That is what I have it set for . But in boot options, no USB option, HD, diskette, DRD, network. And UEFI boot manager. I cannot change anything as as I originally said admin password locked, but never had one..... I think i killed it.