Have you ever been locked out of an old computer by a forgotten BIOS password? There's no need to get frustrated. It is relatively easy to bypass this safeguard.
The BIOS password is the first password that comes up when a computer is turned on. A user can set a BIOS password in system set up. Once it's set, it's impossible to get to the operating system without entering the password. Forgetting a BIOS password or inheriting a computer from a user who set a password is frustrating. Use the methods below to break the BIOS password.
How to Break a BIOS Password Of Desktop Computer (Dell, HP, etc)
Step 1: First power off your computer and make sure that it is unplugged.
Step 2: You need direct physical access to the motherboard of your computer to complete this procedure. So you need to open up your computer case.
Step 3: After opening the computer case, find a circular metallic object on the motherboard, mostly metallic object color is like silver. This metallic object is the CMOS battery.
Step 4: Now carefully remove the CMOS battery, try to avoid touching CMOS battery with your fingers, and leave it out for about minimum 120 seconds. This procedure will flush the CMOS memory which stores the BIOS password and all other configuration information.
Step 5: Now set the CMOS battery back into its original place on motherboard, close your computer case and power on the computer.
Step 6: After restart the computer should then warn you that the CMOS configuration could not be found in your computer. Now You can either reconfigure CMOS battery yourself or restore it to defaults configuration. Restoring it to the default configuration should be fine.
Step 7: After restoration you will notice that the BIOS password has been cleared and you can boot without it.
Note : You may also reset the BIOS password to something else by going into the BIOS configuration option and setting a new User Password.
Warnings
- When a BIOS is locked with password, a checksum of that password is stored to a sector of the FlashROM - this is a chip on the motherboard of the laptop which also contains the BIOS and other settings. For most brands, this checksum is displayed after entering an invalid password for the third time. using this number a password can be calculated. Which is the reason this number is displayed and is the way the OEM tech support calculates a password. Dell laptops use the service tag.
- In rare cases, the battery may be soldered into the motherboard and very difficult to remove. If this is true, you may need to find a jumper near the battery that achieves the same result. If you don't know which jumper it is, you CAN test them all. Unplug (really unplug, not just power off) the computer, and start a methodical change in all the jumpers positions, change one, count to ten, change it back, move on the next. After changing all of the jumper positions (on older motherboards this could take a while) plug the PS back in, and boot up. You may risk damaging your computer with this procedure if you are not careful.
- Some notebooks such as IBM's ThinkPad are rendered useless when the BIOS password is being reset.
- Don't just start pulling jumpers on the motherboard. Make sure you know where it was and in what position in case anything goes wrong, change it back.
- If you turn your computer on and it makes strange noises/beeps, you should contact the vendor, manufacturer, or a repair guy to fix it.
Filed Under: Basic Hacking , MISCELLANEOUS
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