On 09/07/15 10:04, Matthew Woehlke wrote:
In my experience,*new* Dell machines do not have locked BIOS. However, I have a friend who recently bought a "refurbished" Dell machine that had been BIOS locked. It's most likely the entity that "refurbished" the machine that locked the BIOS. You'll need to contact them to obtain the password / do research on them (not Dell) to find typically used passwords. Personally I consider this practice abhorrent and would never buy such a machine or deal with sellers that engage in such practices. Also, FWIW, this friend has had terrible problems with his machine. (A locked BIOS is a red flag; the seller doesn't want you to have full control of the system. You'd better ask yourself *why?*. It may be to try to extort money out of you later for service, or it may be to hide a problem with the machine. Either one isn't good news for you.) My advice: don't buy used computers. Build your own from new parts, or buy new from a reputable dealer. With used, you never know what you're getting (e.g. did someone sell it because some hardware component is going bad?) and you can easily end up having to spend more money to fix it than if you'd bought new. -- Matthew
First, I did not anticipate this problem when I ordered the device. Would you have expected that?
I have initiated the necessary process to get Dell to provide a password, I have also contacted the dealer about an hour ago and I am waiting for a response.
If all else fails I can return it, however I believe it is worth the effort to get the problem corrected, at least give the seller a chance to respond, he is probably reputable, certainly I must assume so until proven otherwise.
I added RAM and F22/XFCE Live on a flash drive runs very nicely on it, a big relief from trying to figure out how Windows7 works.
As for buying new, I really can't justify buying a portable computer, just saw an ad and bought it to play with, with one exception, I have assembled all my computers from new parts in server type cases, very convenient. As I said before it appears to be like new, has a Dell battery in good condition and I think will make a good Fedora computer. It even connected to my NFS server as soon as I created a mount point for it.
Thank you for your advice, Bob -- Bob Goodwin - Zuni, Virginia, USA http://www.qrz.com/db/W2BOD box10 FEDORA-22/64bit LINUX XFCE -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines Have a question? Ask away: http://ask.fedoraproject.org
