How to reset BIOS password?

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I was given a 10 yr old Acer Aspire 4310 laptop yesterday. Had Win7 but boot process hangs and won't complete. Prob bad hard drive sectors. Can't repair the OS as it is password protected. Shucks, I'll just install a Linux distro instead. But I can't change the boot sequence to make the DVDROM the first boot device as the BIOS is also password locked by the previous owner, whose whereabouts no one knows. Any free/cheap way to get around this? Is there a CMOS battery in there I can remove to erase the BIOS settings, like we used to do in the old days for desktops? Anybody know if there is a master password Acer used to free locked machines? Thanks for any help, guys.
 
There might be a clear cmos jumper on the mobo. Most recent cmos passwors would be stored in flash nowadays so removing the battery might not work but worth a try.
 
Either jumper it, or pull the battery. I would go ahead, and put a new battery in it while I was at it.
 
Generally there will be a battery on a lead that you can unplug from the board, may require some disassembly to get to. The F12 boot menu is disabled i assume?
 
BIOS passwords often lock the HDD as well, at least in my case, so I move the HDD to another
computer and it's still locked! That's OK as long as I don't forget!
smile.gif
 
Some machines can have the BIOS password removed, some cannot. I just dealt with this very issue on a (very nice 17") Toshiba laptop. The only way to remove it is to send the laptop to Toshiba and include $200.

Booting from another drive, or replacing the HD won't work. You can change the BIOS settings (boot sequence, etc) but that is ineffective as far as booting the machine goes. The BIOS password lock loads before the low-level boot partition.
 
Originally Posted By: OVERKILL
Generally there will be a battery on a lead that you can unplug from the board, may require some disassembly to get to. The F12 boot menu is disabled i assume?


Aren't those sometimes also cheapy 1032 watch batteries that can be trivially popped out? I swear I did that once years ago in this exact circumstance.
 
Originally Posted By: uc50ic4more
Originally Posted By: OVERKILL
Generally there will be a battery on a lead that you can unplug from the board, may require some disassembly to get to. The F12 boot menu is disabled i assume?


Aren't those sometimes also cheapy 1032 watch batteries that can be trivially popped out? I swear I did that once years ago in this exact circumstance.


Some laptops have them soldered to leads that plug into the board, but essentially the same concept.
 
Well I support laptops with dell pro support.

We have had one of our techs put the wrong bios password on a laptop.

Dell pro support generated a code on the bios and gave us a key to reset the bios password, so there is some kind of an algorithm at work at least for dells.
 
laptops are generally pretty locked down for this sort of thing, even 10 years ago.

replacing the motherboard and hard drive are sometimes the only option.

Not sure about acer, though.
 
Originally Posted By: Subdued
laptops are generally pretty locked down for this sort of thing, even 10 years ago.

replacing the motherboard and hard drive are sometimes the only option.

Not sure about acer, though.


Generally BUSINESS laptops are more locked-down in that respect. I wouldn't say laptops in general. That's been my experience anyways.
 
punisher, that was spot on. I was able to reset the BIOS (by Phoenix) after I entered the error code the screen gave. Unfortunately, after a few minutes, the laptop would die and turn off. If I power back on, it would die again and turn off after a few seconds. No wonder it was free.
 
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