I am trying to rebuild an Hp dv6-1360us

[Scout11]

I got back a DV^-1360us laptop from my daughter, but it is not in real good shape.  i am going to replace the keyboard and hard drive an maybe the battery, but when i did  a test fire on i got a password, before it got to windows.  I called my daughter , but she cannot remember the pass word,  i need help, i an building the laptop for a friend that is a Vietnam vet and he could really use it.  The fastest help the better.

[WAWood]

@Scout11 

I wish we COULD help (as I'm also a Vietnam vet) but we are prohibited by HP policy to assist folks in bypassing or resetting passwords -- regardless of the situation.

Ordinarily, I would provide you a phone number to call to reach HP, but HP does not provide links for phone support in the US because of Scammers that were harvesting those numbers, calling customers, and charging them money for services they did not need.

To get a phone number, you have to go to the HP site listed below, create a support case, and after that, HP will provide contact information, possibly including a phone number. That link is not going to let you create a support ticket if your warranty has expired.  US contact link: https://support.hp.com/us-en/contact-hp

I could also have suggested that you use HP Recovery Media to reformat the drive and reinstall Windows, but HP stopped carrying that years ago, as did other websites -- so there's basically no way to get that media now.

In addition, MS stopped supporting Win7 some time ago, so using it now connected to the Internet is a serious security risk -- and I would personally advise against doing this for a machine you are going to provide someone else.

That leaves the only workable solution -- and even that might not work due to the age of the PC -- and that is installing Windows 10 to it.  I have an older HP DV6 laptop that has been running Win10 since nearly the first day it came out and it's been doing fine all along.  You can get Windows 10 from here:  https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

But ... and this is important ... I did a lot of work to upgrade my DV6 to Win10 and the get it to work and get it to activate -- so I wrote some information on how to do that.  If you decide to go the Win10 route, then read through the material below BEFORE you charge down that path:

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The really hard to upgrade PCs fall into two categories: (1) those that are upgradeable to Win10 and will work OK, (2) those that are not.

HP laptops, especially the older Win7 machines, often came with two different graphics chips -- and Intel and then, either an AMD or Nvidia. This was known as Switchable Graphics or Hybrid Graphics. You ran using the Intel chip most of the time, but when you needed extra graphics power, like in Gaming, the PC automatically switched over to using the AMD or Nvidia graphics chip.

Problem is, this requires special graphics drivers to work, and while those came preinstalled on the Win7 laptops, those drivers simply do not exist for Win10. Those drivers are not available from Intel, AMD, or Nvidia. A way to tell if your PC has two different graphics chips is to look in Device Manager under Display Adapters.

IMPORTANT Warning: If there are two different display adapters listed, one Intel and one AMD/Nividia, then you have this problem -- and if you force an upgrade to Win10, you will have serious graphics problems and your machine will not work.

However, if you do not have this problem, to CAN upgrade to Win10, but you must be prepared to do four things:

1) Make a complete image backup to external drive or large capacity USB stick,
2) Make changes to the reserved system partitioning scheme on your hard drive,
3) Use a different approach than Windows Update to do the Upgrade,
4) Be prepared to do a clean-install, if the Upgrade does not work.

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1: Image Backup:
This is VITAL because the machine is likely to fail the upgrade, and when it does, you will learn that the Win10 GoBack function is NOT reliable, and that can leave you with a corrupted machine that will require factory reset, and losing everything on it, to get it working again.

You avoid this by making an image backup to an external drive or USB stick using Macrium Reflect (MR) which provides a FREE version that can be used to image and restore partitions or entire drives.

What I recommend is the following:
1) Download and install Macrium Reflect (MR)
2) Run MR and choose the option: "Create an image of the partition(s) required to backup and restore Windows" to write a full backup to an external drive or USB stick
3) Use the option to create a boot USB stick or CD

NOW, you have the means to restore a full working system from the external drive or USB stick in only a few minutes.
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2: System Reserved Resizing:
There is a small partition on the hard drive of Win7 preinstalled machines known as System Reserved. This holds something known as the boot loader code. It is 100MB in size -- all that is needed for Win7. But Win10 needs 350MB, and, in some cases, is NOT able to resize this on its own. IF that happens, you have to manually use a partitioning tool to resize it yourself.
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3: Use a different Upgrade approach:
Windows Update is the easiest, but least reliable, way to do the Win10 Upgrade. A much better, and more reliable way, is to use the Microsoft Media Creation Tool: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

In my case, I created Win10 install media on USB, inserted that, and tried to do the Upgrade while still in Win7. That failed -- miserably!!

So, I ended up having to Restore my PC to Win7 (using the MR backup I had made prior to the Upgrade), and follow the details in step 4 -- and that worked!
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4: Prepare for clean-install:
If you do all this, and after the upgrade, your PC is only partially functioning, that means that the Upgrade did not go well and stuff is still there from the prior OS corrupting the functionality of Win10.

You MIGHT be able to fix this by doing a clean-install of Win10. Problem is that a clean-install often does not recognize the prior activation, even though it should.

So, BEFORE you do the upgrade, follow these instructions from the community Win10 forums about creating a genuineticket.xml file: http://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/23354-clean-install-windows-10-directly-without-having-upgrade-fi...

You will need this later to activate your Win10 pc after the clean-install.

NOTE: I did the clean-install, and even though the product-key was SUPPOSED to work to activate Win10, it did not. And, calls to MS about this were wastes of time -- since the MS idiots said I could not activate Win10 with a Win7 product key!!

What DID work was using the genuineticket approach documented in the tenforums thread. I copied that from the USB stick where I saved it, rebooted, and after that, my DV6 was activated.

[Scout11]

I appreciate the thoughts, but the password is in the boot i believe, because as soon as i turn the machine on it ask for password.  I think if i can update the bios i can get rid of the problem.  i have done this before, but i cannot find a bios for the machine

[WAWood]

@Scout11 

That's something we can't help with -- and the DV6 has not been updated in a LONG time, so much so that HP probably does not even have support pages for it.  So, it's unlikely that you are going to be able to find a BIOS update.

[Scout11]

I have fixed that problem, but now i have a new one, i need the software package to get all the system to work, especially the wifi

[Scout11]

The way i fixed the password problem was to take the battery out for five minutes and tried to power up the laptop.  that cleared the bios

[WAWood]

@Scout11 

As far as I know, HP does not provide Win10  drivers or software for the DV6 models. If the WiFi does not work, then you are stuck as that PC was designed for Win7, not Win10.