My dell inspiron 1546 says there is a primary hard drive password and a system password but why does it just shut down instead of letting me type a password?

Hi Shell,

Request you try following the below steps and check if that helps:

(1)Clean the air vents with a can of compressed air.
(2)Keep the laptop on a flat surface.
(3)Update BIOS using the below link:

http://dell.to/1lWy5O1
Input the service tag, click drivers & downloads and download BIOS under BIOS tab. Also let us know if the computer overheats.

For hard drive password you may contact Dell on 18006249896 (U.S only) and prove ownership. They can help you.

For system password you may try following the below steps to take the computer back to factory state:
http://dell.to/1bvvn7z (Win 7 only).

Thanks and Regards.
Kiran Kumar.
#iworkfordell.

Just answered a similar question. Did you set upthese passwords, or did some lame computer store geek do it? either way, you may have a BIOS sytem pass set up and need to know what that pass is. If repeatedly tap F2 or F10 when starting up it should take you to BIOS settings. If that is not the answer, and it windows password, you may have to image the hard drive in order to save documents on there and reinstall the drive. You can then view the image you saved (on another drive) to recover your docs.