[RDK]

My dad recently gave me his old v2 premier laptop. He set an administrator password, which he cant remember. The laptop doesnt have a floppy drive and I cant boot from any CD because the BIOS is password protected.

Can someone help me out here?

[Zardon]

so just to clarify.

The bios is locked out
You dont have a floppy drive
You cant remember the password.

Those three about sum it up? What OS are you running?

[RDK]

Yea, those three sum it up.

Im running windows xp
If the sp matters i think its 2 but not completely sure.

[mkk]

Ask the manufacturer support if there is some reasonably accessible way to clear the CMOS, like through a jumper under the keyboard or something similar.

[Judas]

sometimes the the cmos battery is accessible when removing the initial covers for the mainboard or ram...... on older laptops... anyways..

yes phone the manufacturer..... a special key combo may even work via thier suggestions

[RDK]

Well I just emailed customer support, and if anyone could help me with jumping the CMOS to clear the password, that would be appreciated too.

[BlueMak]

Guys, I read recently that there is a wave of hackers trying to lure people with cracking BIOS of notebooks. Just so you know.
And all of them make the same or similar question.

[RDK]

Dude, im just trying to get back into my laptop, im not hacking anything.

[IEMC]

Originally Posted by BlueMak

Guys, I read recently that there is a wave of hackers trying to lure people with cracking BIOS of notebooks. Just so you know.
And all of them make the same or similar question.

How is that even possible?

[BlueMak]

Originally Posted by IEMC

How is that even possible?

I don't know the details.

[Zardon]

yes there is a possibility of this happening and it crossed my mind in the initial post. That said, this is DriverHeaven and we are here as a support site to the public so we can't just immediately assume this is a foul play case. I know a few people who have genuinely been locked out of their laptops.

Unfortunately there is no way to rescue this machine without a floppy drive as far as I know, you can however pick up a USB floppy drive for very cheap if the worst case scenario happens.

As other people have suggested, a call to the laptop maker would be the wisest bet.

[Syndicate2083]

The problem I see with adding in the external floppy is that if its not set as a floppy seek already in the locked bios, hes still sol.

[Zardon]

yes thats a good point, if you cant get into the bios its going to be difficult to sort this out. unless you can swap out the hard drive with another, reinstall the OS from discs then wipe the original HD and use it as a backup.

[RDK]

Well ive got it down to 2 ways i can get back into my laptop but i need some help.

1) Ive read about resetting the CMOS jumpers to clear the BIOS password, but I have no idea how to open my laptop and what to do from there.

2) Buy a external USB floppy drive and get some kind of recovery floppy. So if i was going to buy an external floppy drive, would i just have to plug it in and it'll work?

Thanks in advance for the help guys.

[Tipstaff]

Do you know what bios manufacturer is used? Is it Award, Phoenix, AMI, or other? The reason I ask is that the manufacturer backdoor password might work. You could also try to get the system to default into the bios by causing a keyboard or system error such as holding down all the keys on the keyboard while it boots up, or hitting the ESC key repeatedly during bootup too.

BTW, you might not need the bios password in order to boot from a CD. In most cases you can hit one of the F keys, such as F10, F11, or F12 to get the boot menu to pop up. If there is a logo at bootup try hitting ESC or TAB to see if it clears the logo, and it might just say what you need to do to get to the bootmenu.

[RDK]

Its phoenix, and yes ive tried the backdoor passwords like phoenix, PHOENIX, BIOS, and CMOS. I'll try overloading the keyboard and i'll try to get to a boot menu with the f keys. Im not home right now so ill let you know tommorow. Thanks for the advice, hope it works

[RDK]

Well I tried holding all the buttons down, and i tried all the F keys. None worked..

[Tipstaff]

With desktop motherboards it's very easy to reset the bios passwords via the removal of the battery/power unless the manufacturer has added extra components to prevent such a thing. IBM, for instance, does (or rather did) this with their machines. With laptops, doing a bios reset the same way is a bit more tricky. Not because it's harder to get to the CMOS battery, but because laptop manufacturers usually add a security chip that stores the password, but in most older machines, or not as expensive/non-business class machines this can still be done. In most cases the only way to get around this is to replace the security chip itself, or have someone reprogram it. Since I'm not familiar with your particular laptop I can't say for sure that you will be able to reset it by removing the CMOS battery.

[RDK]

But wouldnt switching the jumper clear the password even with the security chip?

[Tipstaff]

Originally Posted by RDK

But wouldnt switching the jumper clear the password even with the security chip?

Not really. The reason being is that most laptops don't have CMOS reset jumpers, or use flush mounted jumpers (more like solder points) where you use a screwdriver or 2 wire ends to jumper it. Those that have the security chip, any of the ones I've had to fix that had one I had to either send it back to the manufacturer (thank you IBM), or replace the chip myself. That's not to say it might not work, I just can't say for sure. However the security chip is there for a reason, of which stopping this kind of thing is one of the things it's supposed to do.

As it is, your best bet is to find the CMOS battery, and remove/disconnect it. That might be all that's needed. Of note, you may not need to completely disassemble your laptop. Just open up the easier accessed ports, such as the memory, hard drive, wireless nic ports. You might find the battery in there along with those components. Most times it's a loose battery wrapped in plastic (blue or black), and will have 2 wires coming off of it that are plugged into the board. If you don't find it, then you will have to disassemble the laptop.