Hi. My sister has given me her old laptop - Extensa Travelmate 510. This laptop was bought in Korea with Win95 loaded in Korean. 6 months ago the hard drive failed. The old hard drive was 810 mb in size. The laptop was working fine until then. The hard drive I just put in is 5 gb with Win98SE loaded.


My problem is that when it starts up it gives me the message " Invalid system disk. Replace the disk then press any key ".

I have tried pressing F2 to enter setup but it asks for a key. My sister didn't know it was locked.

I tried the following passwords which I found on the internet but have had no luck.

AWARD BIOS
AWARD SW, AWARD_SW, Award SW, AWARD PW, _award, awkward, J64, j256, j262, j332, j322, 01322222, 589589, 589721, 595595, 598598, HLT, SER, SKY_FOX, aLLy, aLLY, Condo, CONCAT, TTPTHA, aPAf, HLT, KDD, ZBAAACA, ZAAADA, ZJAAADC, djonet

AMI BIOS
AMI, A.M.I., AMI SW, AMI_SW, BIOS, PASSWORD, HEWITT RAND, Oder

Other passwords I have tried are:-
LKWPETER, lkwpeter, BIOSTAR, biostar, BIOSSTAR, biosstar, ALFAROME, Syxz, Wodj

I have even tried my sister's name, the words 'extensa, pentium, win95, korea', any serial numbers on the laptop, parts of the bios number, thinking that it must be something obvious and that the serviceman could easily remember or identify on the laptop.

I have removed the keyboard to access the motherboard to see if I can remove the battery - but there isn't a removable one, or reset the jumper but couldn't identify which one.

I cannot access the floppy drive to flash the bios because the System Information has 'Boot Device = C '. The floppy has power.
The system has picked up the hard drive as ' Hard Disk 0 = 4887 mb'

Can anyone suggest something else that I could try? I would really like to get this laptop going again.

I would consider physically shorting out the bios if i could identify the correct pins. Or is the problem something else?

thank you for your help, Humphrey

The closest manual I could find online is TravelMate 520

http://www.acerpanam.com/synapse/dat...ts/tm520ug.pdf

They advise not to forget your Setup password or if you do take it to a shop.

You could try contacting Acer:

http://us.acer.com/acereuro/page11.d...&crc=790373818

There are some reports of possible access codes available from Acer.

Thank you very much.

My sister was not informed that it was locked. So she didn't have a password to forget.

Humphrey

I didn't mean to imply anything by the forgetting part but was just quoting the manual I found.

Sorry if it came across wrong. I could find no other solution save contacting Acer.

No insult taken Jephree.

Just trying to make it clear that Shelley wasn't informed about a password from the Korean salesman. Guess he thought because she was blond, she was also dumb.

But thank you for your help. I couldn't get through to those web sites the other day but will try again.

Humphrey