Benni

To cut a long story short an old friend of mine doing me a favour took my laptop off me for the day to get it running correctly. He got the laptop running brilliant but he put a bios password on my laptop so when you start it up before it does anything it asks you for a password. He said he didn't know how to remove it. He reformatted it and it was still there. It's doing my head in having to type his car registration in every time I start up my laptop.

Any help is greatly appreciated, Cheers benni.

snedboy

Go to start button then control panel then user accounts then select ure username and remove password job done

andyhardy

I think he's on about a password on the BIOS of the machine, not in Windows.

Once you've started the machine up and logged in with his password, hit DEL, F8, F10 etc. (depending on what your machine says on the screen) and you'll enter BIOS. Look for a setting amongst all the menus to remove the option he's some how switched on.

Personally, I wouldn't lend him a machine to fix if he put that on and didn't know how to get it off again!

Unless he was just trying to wind you up

The reason it didn't go away with a format is because this is all EPROM based stuff for the motherboard - nothing to do with the HDD or the OS installed on it.

Cheers,

Andy

lawnsy

iTrader: (1)

hello 90% of laptops you can remove the bios password by removing the power supply and the battery then opening the machine up and removing the bios battery leave it for ten mins then put the power supply in and start the machine up with the bios batery still out......this should reset the bios then turn machine off and refit the bios battery...........

i buy a lot of laptops to repair and sell on and this so the only way to do it unless you see the person who done it and get the password then going to bios and disable it that way.......

patchST

what Laptop is it, and I'll look to see how to get in the bios.

lawnsy

iTrader: (1)

it will not let him into the bios untill he has typed the password in...

Stu.H

Type the password and immediately hit F1, F2, or DEL

There will be the password option under the security tab.

HTH

lawnsy

iTrader: (1)

Just read your post propperly and noticed you got the password

yip just do as stu.h said

this was the first post i read when i woke up and i read it as you did not know the pasword.....

cozmeister

iTrader: (1)

Depending on the BIOS's manufacturer, there are tools available that can erase these passwords, however, enormous care must be taken to ensure you have the correct tool, or you'll render the machine useless.

If it's a Dell, there is a utility that gives you the 'default' BIOS password when you enter the Service Tag. The default BIOS password on these is so that engineers and technicians (like me) don't have to sit playing guessing games because the user forgot the password. Only on Dells though...

Benni

The machine is a toshiba Equium E860 And what others have said I will try soon as I can as it's being repaired as the power supply wasn't working. Thanks everyone. Been a big help as always.

andyhardy

Maybe they should have stated that in their original post then! I was just trying to help

Turbocabbie

The BIOS passwords on the Tosh laptops do not clear when you remove the CMOS battery.... you have to reset them which can be done with a special tool Toshiba have or the work around stated below :-


You can use this plug to remove or clear the BIOS password from older Toshiba laptops. Using the plug you should be able to remove a BIOS password from most Pentium III Toshiba laptops and from some Pentium IV laptops. To make a password removal tool you need a DB25 plug from a parallel printer cable (cable with a plug that you can take apart), a solder gun and 30-40 minutes of your time.

Cut a DB25 connector off an old parallel printer cable and remove screws to disassemble the plug. The wires should be long enough to strip the ends and solder them.

All pins on the connector are marked from 1 to 25 and you should connect and solder together the wires from the following pins:

1+5+10

2+11

3+17

4+12

6+16

7+13

8+14

9+15

On some connectors pins 18 through 25 are already connected. If they are not connected, connect them. Do not connect a wire from pins 18-25 and a ground wire to anything, just insulate it with electrical tape and leave alone.

Carefully fold the wires, put wires inside the DB25 connector and assemble the connector.


Connect the plug to the parallel port on your Toshiba laptop and turn on the laptop. You should bypass the BIOS password and the laptop will boot directly to the operating system.

NOTE : IF YOU SCREW THIS UP, IF YOUR SOLDERING IS NOT GOOD YOUR LAPTOP SMOKES/DIES
NOTE 2 :- IF YOU SMOKE YOUR LAPTOP IM NOT INTERESTED AS YOU DO EVERYTHING AT YOUR OWN RISK

I unlock bios passwords and market these plugs if you wish for myself to assume the risks...Toshiba service centres can also do this for you

patchST

I've got one of those for the Toshiba's we use at work, but it doesn't work on all of the machines and some times takes two or three trys

Benni

Hi mate, Ignore him please he is the one that put the password on in the first place. I'm 100% Grateful for your help and I didn't know what he said to state it in my original post sorry. I never even knew what a bios was until the password was put on.


Cheers everyone for your help, Benni. And I will get my dad to do the above if all else fails he's an electrician.

DanRSturbo

I was pretty certian that all bios passwords were stored in the cmos battery ? Bearing in mind that when you remove the cmos battery, it reset's the date and time

Jonzy

Actaully no, its not rubbish at all. Tosh laptops write it back to non-vol memory. Can only be reset using keys as described.

Usually if you aint got the password to start the machine, you wont be getting into the bios.

AndyBlackFRST

Just tried to help out. But cannot find any record anywhere of the toshiba Equium E860.

Could you confirm the model again please.

The Toshiba usually comes up with a welcome screen that can be cancelled by pressing the '2scape' key. This should then allow you to seee the keystroke required to access the bios.

Benni

I don't have the laptop on me at the moment, It could be EA60. Has the blue top.

cozmeister

iTrader: (1)

To get into a Toshiba's BIOS, you hold ESCAPE when you turn it on...

Except for certain Toshibas, which are actaully rebadged Samsung units - these use a standard PhoenixBIOS which you access by pressing whatever key the POST screen displays.

Turbocabbie

I never ever made any statement regarding if bios settings were stored in volatile memory. The bios passwords on SOME toshiba laptops are stored on an EEProm (erasable programmable) chip on the MB which is non-volatile(not dependant on power) so pulling the battery won't work on some toshiba laptops

Rather than stating that in ALL toshiba laptops store the bios password in this volatile memory and that removing the battery resolves this issue in ALL toshiba laptops while informing everyone that I obviously talk utter bullshit seems unwise unless you can prove otherwise which you have not done

Now obviously you have every right to comment on something you obviously know very little about, you have every right to state that I talk utter bullshit but perhaps you would like to inform the following website that they also do this as the KeyDisk as it is known features on this site also and many others... how many links would you like me to provide ?

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/CmosPwd

I would also like to bring to your attention a quote from a website that sells such keys... Wonder why they do not get complaints - Could it be the keys work when removing the battery does not ?

http://www.pwcrack.com/security_chips_toshiba.shtml

I dare say your very capable of proving that I and other websites with this information are wrong, not to mention company's selling these tools and toshiba for convincing people like me that these tools were needed them in the first place.

Not all Toshiba laptops are the same, some you can pull the battery and some you can not, its dependant upon the motherboard, year of production and the specification...

But then again its probably utter bullshit