Issues accessing BIOS, Recovery Manager, etc.

[egray723]

I hope I am posting in the correct place, though I am not even sure that anyone will be able to help me.

I had let someone borrow an old laptop of mine for an indefinite amount of time. I recently got it back and it seems that while this person had it they ran system recovery, made themselves the administrator, & password protected Windows. In addition to them supposedly not remembering the password, the screen is completely busted. I cannot access BIOS to change the boot order so that I could reinstall. I'm hooked up to an external monitor, but nothing appears on it until Windows is loaded. 

Is there any way to work around this short of replacing the screen? I'm not certain that's what I want to do as I do have a newer PC and not a lot of disposable money, but there are some children I know that could get some use out of it. Any help would be appreciated.

[WAWood]

@egray723

Hello;

Allow me to welcome you to the HP forums!

Sorry, but you're facing a standard limitation of using an external monitor on a laptop -- and it will, as you have guessed, not show anything until the appropriate Windows drivers are loaded, making it unusuable for BIOS-related stuff.

If you want, I can post a link to a download you can use to burn a CD to use to reset the password on your PC, but it might not work with the screen busted.