removing a power on password from an NX9005 HP laptop, how ??? (plus it caught fire)

locutus12 · 12 Apr 2006 at 21:33

ive been given this laptop to work on as my friends just gotten 6 in to sell on and i need to remove the power on password that no one seems to know... :confused:

i called HP and they said they cant (or wont) help me unless i send them the laptop and pay them to do it! but they did tell me where the CMOS battery was as i couldnt find the bugger.

so today i had to strip this laptop down to get to the CMOS battery, and when i say strip, i mean i had to take EVERTHING apart. took 2 hours

basically HP have put the bat on the underside of the motherboard with no access panel for it on the bottom :confused:

idiots...

nevertheless, the bat was removed for around half an hour, ive put it all back together and booted it and besides the small fire (more on that in a moment) the passwords still there and joyfully intact.

The Fire: ( YEY!!! FLAMES!!!)
when i booted it for the first time, there was a small fizz then something glowed white hot, small flame :eek:

then white smoke !!! :eek:

looked like ive fried the external VGA connector somehow, but the laptops still working so no massive harm done...

locutus12 · 12 Apr 2006 at 21:41

all the batterys were taken out for over 40 minutes, everything was disconnected from each other, the laptop was nothing more than seperat parts laid out across a desk.It seems the passwords written on a 64kb static memory chip so its never going to lose the information (something the guy at HP did warn me about but he wasnt sure if it was on this model)

EDIT: a CMOS will discharge relatively quickly, most discharge within seconds, thinking about the 2 episodes of frasier i watched, i was gone for nearly an hour.

locutus12 · 12 Apr 2006 at 21:44

L337 LooX said:
i see, well i think the only way is to get the password from its original owner

no chance of that

i know theres programs i can use to do this, but i dont know how or where to get them

locutus12 · 12 Apr 2006 at 21:48

binaryknight said:
could try flashing the bios?
usually a cmos reset does the trick on a desktop dunno if there is a jumper for this on lappys

no way to flash it

and nope, no CMOS clear jumpers on this laptop.

L337 LooX said:
thinking back i remember a mate with an IBM laptop with its hard drive locked with a password

you should have seen my face as he threw the 60gb 5400rpm drive in the bin (5 metres away) then proceeded to tell me that the drive was useless without the password (totally secure unchangable)

yup hardware with lost passwords are pretty much scrap metal

locutus12 · 12 Apr 2006 at 21:56

Phnom_Penh said:
Toshiba, dunno about HP, say that you can remove the password by removing the battery + residual power, and leaving the laptop for 24 hours.

im not stripping this ****** again... lol. the guy at HP said 2 minutes to discharge, an hour would have been more than enough. he just didnt have the details about the type of memory that the laptop info is stored on.

locutus12 · 12 Apr 2006 at 22:18

ah, you mean the standard battery pack, the reason they say 24 hours is because without the mains power or the battery pack, the CMOS battery is unable to recharge and will discharge within 24 hours, my point is that i actually had the CMOS battery and the laptop battery out for nearly an hour and it didnt solve it, which means that the passwords written on a static memory chip and regardless of charge, its not going to lose the information.

locutus12 · 12 Apr 2006 at 22:27

all power, as i said before, by the time i had finished with it, it wasnt a laptop, just individual parts laid out on a desk.

locutus12 · 12 Apr 2006 at 22:35

BONES__69 said:
Not True!

I have unlocked many IBM laptops with forgotten passwords!
O.K it does require that you strip it apart and solder a few cables to certain legs on the ATMEL 24RF08 PIC and then reading it with a very basic and easy to build serial PIC reader connected to another PC/Lappy.
You then also need to decrypt the HEX as it's encrypted but that’s very easy as some clever dude made a simple program for that.

So no it's not impossible just need to do some research and have a very steady soldering hand.

well, thats not gonna happen, that much is certain... but its always good when someone comes onto a post and speaks gobbledygook for five minutes.

any more ideas ? :confused:

locutus12 · 12 Apr 2006 at 22:38

Phnom_Penh said:
Cry...
Eat It...
Send It Back?...

bugger

locutus12 · 12 Apr 2006 at 23:33

ichabod crane said:
could ya not just formatt the bugger. reinstall windows start a fresh

its a bios password, not windows login password.

locutus12 · 13 Apr 2006 at 16:18

Phnom_Penh said:
I made one of them a while ago, but afaik it's only for toshibas...

It's also possible that it's got a capacitor backup which lasts 24 hours or so :\. Was the clock etc and bios settings wrong when you turned it on after taking it apart?
Also have you tried using Compaq as a password?

i dont know, it doesnt let you get that far...

ive just had the CMOS battery out again and powered up the lappy from the mains after shorting the battery connection, passwords still there, it has to be stored on static memory.

locutus12 · 13 Apr 2006 at 18:01

Phnom_Penh said:
Hmm, I'd take all the batteries out and leave it overnight (or for 24 hours), as you've got nothing to lose.

indeed, HP refuse to give me the backdoor pass too

they said "we cant give you that, but we can book your laptop in for a motherboard replacement :eek: