So. I just bought my wife a new laptop with Windows 7 on it and it showed up to the house one morning before I went to work. I asked her NOT to play with it until I got home.............I get a call about 6 hours later from her. She has apparantly signed into the computer as the ONLY user/admin and mistyped the password I would guess, twice. Now a brand new Gateway, which does not come with restore disks, is locked and not usable. I have no IDEA how to get into it.This computer is effectively a 3 day old paperweight. OHH HAPPY DAYS..

While I can appreciate your problem, we cannot offer help on any bypassing password related issues. We have no way of knowing whether the laptop may be stolen.

All I can suggest is you both try to get the entered password right/correct. There can't be that many variations from what was entered.

Also, if you take it back to where it was purchased, they may be able to assist in resetting it for you.

That is kind of what I expected. Anyway, Thanks for the wonderful job you guys do. She will be home tomorrow and hopefully we can figure it out!

Since it's brand new, you could restore to factory install state and start over, as if your wife had never touched it

You do this by pressing a Fn key during boot. Which one to use is usually displayed on the screen during early boot time. Normally F11 or Ctrl+F11 but it does vary with manufacturer.

Ztruker
"Now a brand new Gateway, which does not come with restore disks, is locked and not usable"

This is how most laptops are. The password is at the "BIOS level". If you could simply Restore or boot it with an O/S CD/DVD, it would be more appealing to thieves.

I FINALLY got it working! Now I am just trying to get the appropriate protection installed onto it. I installed, even though it isn't my favorite, Norton 360 5.0 and Spybot S&D. I forget what else needs to go on it though.

Was the password a login password or a BIOS level password?

I've read some good things about the new version of Norton. I would be very interested to know your thoughts on it after you get everything setup. From what I've read it does not put a big a load on the computer as previous versions.

It was a Logon level password. I was able to get into the Bios and work it out from there.