I have big trouble. When my computer was new (5 or 6 months) I evidently responded to a prompt by creating a bootup password, with an accompanying Hint. But all that time the computer never asked for the password, until two days ago. It prompted me with "wheredave", which I believe to be a truncated version of the hint I set up originally. It now suddenly wants the password, and why the hint is truncated, I have no idea.

I apparently never wrote down what the password should be, like a natural-born fool.

That original hint had to continue with something like BORN, EDUCATED, IN ARMY, MARRIED, and the like. "BORN" could be Rochester, or Rochester Minnesota, or Minnesota without the city, or St. Mary's or St.Mary's Hospital or something like that. If it was "ARMY", the password would surely be Germany. And similarly with names of grade and high school, university, or private business school. And maybe some other "wheres" that I can't think of. And of course any of those would be subject to variations of capitalization, spacing, and/or punctuation.

To make a long story a trifle shorter, I've worked over those possibilities exhaustively, and haven't struck the real password. I've more or less run dry with variations.

That's not a technical problem that Mudcatters could help with, so I have to assume I am not going to come up with the password. And therein lies my present dilemma.

The computer came with Windows 7 installed, and I do have a brand-new, never-used, Windows 7 installation set, which I bought for a different computer but haven't installed because that computer doesn't have enough memory or hard drive space. Which leads me to a number of puzzlements:

1. Older versions of Windows, when installed, wiped out EVERYTHING on the hard drive, or at least left them irretrievable. I think I have heard that Windows 7 does not. Does anyone know?

I could live, if necessary, with a wiped-clean hard drive. I have or can get installation disks for the software, and recreating or retrieving the data from backups would be possible, though a pain in the neck.

2. But is it even going to be possible to install the new Windows 7, with or without the hard drive contents? Since I can't boot up, can I run the Windows 7 installation CD(s)?

3. Where, if anyone knows, is the password stored? If it's in some semipermanent memory in the computer rather than on the hard disk, might I be stuck with that unknown password even after a new Windows 7 install?

4. Or even if I installed a different new hard drive and managed to install Windows 7, would I still be stuck?

As you can readily see, I'm desperate. HELP!

Dave Oesterreich