clearing forgotten password

[miobombino]

I'm obviously not techy enough to do this..can anyone help I wonder ?

ds2 (12) was mucking about with using his Dell PC with a friend. They changed the password several times and now he can't remember it , even with the prompt.
I've looked at the Dell manual under "clearing forgotten passwords" and tried to remove the password jump as suggested, but no joy.

I need to override the password because i'm trying to complete a wireless network here at home - have linked one PC and my new laptop but I'm stuck on his as due to the lack of password access. I can't install the BT adapter in order to get ds onto the Home hub. He's not yet on the internet even via USB, but in any event I want him connected wirelessly, as dh has bought the little blighter an ipod which will arrive any day now and will need setting up, plus he needs the internet more for homework research etc etc.

is this something I can fix myself, or will I need to Get Someone In ?

Anyone, please ?!

During boot, you can do something to go into system setup - F2 on my laptop. I think you can change the password there.

If the PC is reasonably new, then Dell should provide telephone support for free.

Thanks so much ! PC geriatric as these things go, so I booted and reinstalled windows xp via F12.

I've reset the password and opened a separate account for him.

Wireless connection now done...just got to introduce his new ipod to the PC tomorrow...it arrived this afternoon !

Any chance of a smidgeon of further advice, vis a vis what's the most reliable and flexible parental control offering out there ? I want fairly heavy filtering for my 14, 12 and 9 yo, with flexibility according to access times\content, together with remote monitoring via my laptop for those times I can't be in the same room and/or the filter isn't working as well as it might.

I can't help you with parental control. My limited experience is that not enough sites have a rating, so you end up not able to do anything useful on the internet. DS (13) already has a drawer full of porn (stories, not pictures) and DD (9) is not interested.

Oh dear !