OT ... Locked out of laptop .. no password

[The Natural Philosopher]

[The Natural Philosopher]

ther wont be any startup without the passowrd.

[Allan Mac]

Many have the option of setting the password for booting

Ok not seen this before

[Jules Richardson]

Worst-case #1, I suspect a data-recovery specialist could do it - there's probably some physical hardware in there that could be wiped / reprogrammed to clear the password. Probably not cheap, but cheaper than a new laptop.

Worst-case #2 would be to buy a replacement system board from somewhere and fit it. Fiddly as hell and again not cheap, but cheaper than a new laptop.

That's assuming that there aren't any simpler methods - check with Dell to see if there's a reset mechanism built in, or if they can't issue you with a passord that works first...

Re. "power cable" do you mean an entire adapter, or just the cable itself that plugs into the wall? If the latter, anything that'll fit I would have thought.

cheers

Jules

[Man at B&Q]

Just buy a universal laptop charger that is adjustable and comes with all (or most of) the right plugs.

MBQ

[Man at B&Q]

A password set in the BIOS (aka a BIOS password) can often be used to prevent booting.

Our work laptops have a "hard drive password" but I'm not sure where those are actually stored.

MBQ

[Michael Chare]

"Mike P the 1st" wrote in message news: [e-mail]...

No, and you have to watch out because modern laptops tend to need more power than old ones.

[Mike P the 1st]

On Mon, 22 Nov 2010 08:26:23 +0000, Mike P the 1st gently dipped his quill in the best Quink that money could buy:

I noticed tonight that as it starts up, there is the option to press F2 for setup and F12 for boot menu. After keying either it says it is opening either ... but then the password authentication kicks in.

Mike P the 1st

[Reentrant]

It's stored in a reserved area on the disk itself, and the drive's hardware interface won't enable until it's presented with the correct password by BIOS POST. This stops someone taking the drive from your laptop, inserting it into another one or a caddy, and reading the data.

[Mike Tomlinson]

In article , Mike P the 1st writes

That sounds like a hard drive password, not a BIOS password.

Google "ATA password" and "ATApwd.zip". I have used the latter successfully, but that was years ago.

You may have to replace the hard drive and hope the BIOS doesn't cunningly re-lock the new drive.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Is a bios password a laptop thingie? Neither of my desktop PCs appear to have that option.

[Andy Burns]

Not exclusively, but due to their higher theft potential it's seen as (but probably isn't to the thief) a deterrent or a security measure.

On a desktop PC the password only tends to be stored on the NVRAM, hence removing battery defeats it, on laptops they tend to be stored "somewhere else" perhaps a hidden bit of flash that stores the asset tag codes and other stuff that only the BIOS or diagnostics knows how to get at.

Some also lock the individual hard disk to the individual machine, so it can't be removed and read in another machine - not foolproof (xboxes do similar but people have different motivation for bypassing those).

[The Natural Philosopher]

My intel atom board has.

[Dave Liquorice]

My machine doesn't (IIRC), that is nearly 10 years old but the two more recent window boxes do.

[airsmoothed]

I'm using a Dell Inspiron 6000 at the moment so I've just had a quick look in the setup (i.e. pressed F2 at startup). There are three passwords, admin, system and HDD. Admin seems to be pretty much a BIOS lockout password, although it says something like 'can also substitute for system password' just top confuse matters. System password is effectively a power on password by the looks of it, to prevent unauthorised boot, and HDD password unsuprisingly stops all HDD access, and is still enabled if the HDD is moved to another machine, as mentioned above.

[Mike P the 1st]

On Tue, 23 Nov 2010 05:10:40 -0800 (PST), airsmoothed gently dipped his quill in the best Quink that money could buy:

Well, that is sort of good news and I reckon that is what my son and heir has done .. locked the HDD.

His Mum did register the machine when she boughtg it direct from Dell, so Dell support will be my first port of call.

Mike P the 1st

[John Rumm]

Most (probably all these days) laptops will have it. Many desktops too, although on a desktop its more often a password to prevent entering the bios config screen rather than to booting at all. Laptops may also support hard drive passwords - which although often easy to circumvent by changing hard drives, will often render a stolen hard drive useless.

(shame no one told HMRC about that!)

[John Rumm]

Won't help for a HDD, bur most BIOSs also have "master" passwords that can gain entry irrespective of what the user set it to, for example: