Locked out of bios?

9761

9761

9761

Soldato
Joined
23 Feb 2004
Posts
4,143
Location
Brentwood, Essex
Help!

For some reason now it asks me for a password to get into the bios, its a dell computer.

Ive tried every password I know of but that doesn't work.

anyway I can get passed it?
 
IVe taking out the battery for 5mins but that hasn't worked. I cannot find any cmos jumpers
 
was power lead out of the psu while the battery was out? i find in some dells that the psu has also got to be unplugged before *** reset happens
 
Yes, I was able to change 1st 2nd 3rd boots and look at cpu speed etc but now I cannot.
 
what else can I do?

I tried leaving battery out for about 15mins but that did not work
 
russ9898 said:
try taking the battery out (remove power cord 1st), then boot the system and see if that works.
Click to expand...

I agree if you take the cmos battery out then plug the machine back in and try booting, I've seen some mobos that needed this. Seems strange that a password has appeared as if by magic, do you have any little hands that might of done something?

I had an IBM laptop once that you could not reset the bios p/w on for love nor money. well actually in the end the only way to do it involved going to an electronics lab (which i have accsess to but couldnt be bothered) and hooking the bios chip to a pc and using a program to clear it.

hopefully this isnt the case with dell
 
I had the same problem with a really old dell. Was second hand so didnt know if it was factory set or by previous owner.

If you google you will find others have had the same problem and lists of suggested dell default passwords to try. None worked for me though.
 
I had a similar issue with an HP laptop i had a while back, difference being that i had set a BIOS pass which worked fine for two weeks then refused to let me in after that, and all of HP's 'magic' password would not work either so i had to send it back and the mobo had to be replaced. Strange how yours has set the pass itself though :confused:
 
I had the exact same on an ancient Dell laptop... Eventually they basically said "It's ****ed". We never sent it back, wasn't worth it, but they told us it needed a new board. Thing is, the password definately wasn't changed or locked by us, it had corrupted or reset to a default we think.
 
Last edited:
To reset the cmos on most mobos there will be a little jumper switch (similar to the master/slave select on a hard drive) with probably "CMOS reset" or seomething similar in tiny writing (try to find the mobo manual on the net). Resetting involves ensuring no power to the mobo (battery, mains) and repositioning this little jumper so that different pins are connected.

Ofcourse, never had any dealings with dell, maybe its totally different.
 
J.B said:
I had an IBM laptop once that you could not reset the bios p/w on for love nor money. well actually in the end the only way to do it involved going to an electronics lab (which i have accsess to but couldnt be bothered) and hooking the bios chip to a pc and using a program to clear it.

hopefully this isnt the case with dell
Click to expand...
Thats a common problem, many laptops store the password in some flash memory which you can't manually clear. Usually you have to pay the manufacturer for a special override password for that specific laptop. In this case resetting the cmos and removing the battery are no help.
I hope this dell isn't the same.
 
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