how to restore my ibm laptop to factory settings? i forgot my admin password, so help me.

if you really want to wipe your pc clean, boot from the restore disks and delete everything. Password issues should then be moot.
if not, then read on:

you should have administrative privilages on your PC with your account which you can use to reset passwords.
right click on your "my computer" icon from your start menu or anywhere else you see it and select "properties"
click on the "advanced" tab and then click on "settings" within the "user profiles" section and write down the names that appear in the names column (1) (you can ignore what precedes the '\')
now restart your computer into safe mode (restart the pc and before the windows logo appears and continuously press the 'F8' key, holding the key down will NOT work)
when prompted, select start the computer in safe mode.
login with your account name from (1)
once logged in, open your control panel and go to the user's section and open the administrator's icon. there should be an item to click that says "remove password" which doesn't appear in normal startup. You can change the password here if you prefer.

oh, the logon account for the administrator is always administrator (almost never admin)
I bet your logon password combination is
administrator
(no password)

if the safe mode method doesn't work, there are programs that can reset passwords in windows. I usually don't recommend them because they can corrupt accounts. One in particular that I do like is called "passwordrenew for nt's by sala"
(google sala password)

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Reset Windows password with password reset disk
Requirement: an USB flash drive, download it from:
http://www.lost-password.net/products/pa...

Windows was designed to be able to create password reset disk without any other third party tools. If you remember the password, you could create a password reset disk through Windows 's control panel in advance. And if you forgot Windows password and was unable to log on to your computer, then you could use the disk to reset Windows 7 password. Now you could follow these simple steps to create one:

Step 1. Start your computer and log on Windows .

Step 2. Insert an USB flash drive into your computer.

Step 3. Click Start > Control Panel > User Accounts and Family Safety > User Accounts > Create a password reset disk

I had this same problem with an IBM T42. Fortunately, I was able to log on with a domain admin account, reset the local admin password which then prompted me to change the Rescue and Recovery password. I set the R&R password to the same as the local admin password. Then I restarted the system, hit the Access IBM button, entered the new password and got into R&R.