BIOS Password problem

[Solouko]

Ok this is a friend of mine who's done this not me.. i'm not quite stupid enough to accidentaly set a HDD pasword on a laptop then forget what the password was.

it's an Acer Traval Mate 2300 and as mentioned the HDD has been locked so without the password it will not boot!!

he's phoned Acer and they wish to charge him £50 to give him a back door password to unlock it.

we've tried taking the CMOS battery out and leaving it out for about an hour (which was hard and we're still trying to get it back together now) but it's still not worked.

does anyone know any backdoor passwords for ACER laptops, or a program that could crack it... or what about a BIOS flash? would that work because we can still access the BIOS setup just not the hard drive as there's a seperate password for it.

 

[Joe42]

The only way is to reset the cmos, and on many newer systems that doesn't work because theres some non volatile memory used to store the password, so removing the battery/resetting the cmos doesn't work.

I think the backdoor passwords are different depending on the model of laptop and perhaps even the batch otherwise they would be unsecure.

 

[MikeTimbers]

This may not work any more but years ago we used to unlock locked laptops by taking off as much of the shell as possible then spraying any exposed circuitry with a CO2 fire extinguisher until it was covered in dry ice. The cold won't damage anything but it can freeze the battery, causing the BIOS to reset.

 

[noxidjkram@hotm]

I may be wrong, but i believe the Ultimate Boot CD has something on it for doing this.

Try googling for UBCD and checking to see what capabilities it has...

[edit] It has a tool called !BIOS that may be able to help, plus some other ones - you'll need to research their use though [\edit]

M

 

[Joe42]

This may not work any more but years ago we used to unlock locked laptops by taking off as much of the shell as possible then spraying any exposed circuitry with a CO2 fire extinguisher until it was covered in dry ice. The cold won't damage anything but it can freeze the battery, causing the BIOS to reset.

Wouldn't it have been easier to remove the battery? And if it could freeze the battery wouldn't it also freeze the capacitors?

The OP says he has removed the battery anyway so freezing it isn't going solve the problem if removing it doesn't.

 

[cobxx]

This may not work any more but years ago we used to unlock locked laptops by taking off as much of the shell as possible then spraying any exposed circuitry with a CO2 fire extinguisher until it was covered in dry ice. The cold won't damage anything but it can freeze the battery, causing the BIOS to reset.

Haha, sounds like a good/fun method!

I don't think flashing the bios would remove the password, but UBCD sounds like it will be your best.cheapest bet