[BC] Spotmau powerSuite 2008 - an update

[Xmitters at aol.com]

Hello:

Still no luck getting Spotmau PowerSuite 2008 CDR to boot my Dell 2650 
laptops; I have three of them, all three are set to boot from CDR first. 

We have a Dell GX 2800 desktop and it would not boot in that computer either. 
I went into CMOS and disabled the Hard Drive from booting the machine at all. 
Spotmau was then able to boot the computer! I was also able to reset the 
admin password!

I tried this new skill on the three Dell 2650's. No luck. The spotmau logo 
appeared o the screen and the boot progress bar just sat there for nearly an 
hour. I even physically removed the hard drive from the 2650 to see if spotmau 
would at least boot the computer. Nothing happened beyond BIOS POST test. 

This experience would suggest that there is some kind of boot protection in 
the 2650 machines that is not in the GX280 and others. I checked for boot 
sector virus protection in CMOS, but none there. I then tried a Dell Dimension 4400 
with a blank hard drive. Spotmau was able to boot up that computer just fine. 
And it correctly reported that the HD was present, but was not formatted. 

I also have a Dell Latitude CPi laptop with Win 98 on it. Spotmau CDR was 
able to boot up that machine, but it could not reset the admin password, even 
though the software is intended to work with windows 98 also. 

There are lots of good comments about this software on the Internet, but I 
have been unable to get it to boot the Dell 2650, or find any information as to 
why it will not. 

Spotmau's technical support is about as wortheless as feathers around a pig's 
rectum. No help at all, and good for nothing. 

Buyer beware.


Jeff Glass, BSEE CSRE
Dell 2650 Win2000/SP3 AOL 7.0






> From: "Gary Glaenzer" <gglaenzer at hqradio.com>
> Subject: Re: [BC] Spotmau Power Suite 2008 software
> To: "Broadcasters' Mailing List" <broadcast at radiolists.net>
> 
> 
> there's no jumpers on the motherboard to reset the passwords ?
> 
> 

Gary:

It oes not matter if there is, or is not. I will reload the O/S rather than 
tear down a laptop. I'm quite sure I could get a fresh O/S up and running 
before I could tear down the computer and put it back together. 

The original  post was not how to reset a lost password. The question 
basically was, has anyone here used Spotmau Powersuite 2008 to reset a password? 
Since my original post, two Dell 2650 laptops will not reset the admin password 
with the Spotmau bootable CDR, and my Gateway Solo 9150 _does_ reset the admin 
password as we gave it a try late this PM.  

So why does Spotmau reset the admin password in the Gateway, but not in th 
Dell computers?  All three computers are using win2000/SP4. All three computer 
CMOS is configured to boot from CDR first. I'm not sure what "O/S" Spotmau uses 
for their powersuite software. Maybe tghere's something in CMOS that would 
prevent a non-Windows O/S from booting the hardware? What coud that possibly be?

So, that's why I need help from someone that's actually used this software. 

The manufacturer's tech support is basically useless; they keep asking for 
more and more information from me with less and less usable information in 
return. This is not a very high quality product in my opinion.

FDISK - The universal password reset tool :-)





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