Debian on a laptop....

[Bill Gladney]

hello...I'm trying to remove the remnants of Debian....but it is password protected....not my machine...a friend of mine asked me to get it all off....or format it .....and install a copy of Win XP that she could use and understand....she bought this computer from another person...who lost the password....and now I'm faced with the project of formatting the hard drive....but cannot by-pass the flash page which comes up .asking me for user ID and password....I wonder if there's a way to do this without actually taking the hard drive out....and throwing it as far as I can.....or is there a solution to this problem..short of getting a new hard drive.....thanx....