BIOS Password

[BobZ]

I have a DOS machine where a student has assigned a password to the BIOS without telling anyone. Is there any way to get rid of this password without pulling the battery? The student does not remember what the password was set to.

[Igor M]

Hi,

Some motherboards has a jumper near the battery to reset CMOS contents. If you have such jumper install it to another position for a few seconds and then reinstall it back. If you not have such jumper I think your only option is to pull battery out and wait for a few hours to discharge CMOS power supply.

Good luck, Igor M

[sparc]

There are several programms available through the internet which can read a bios password. But of course you must be able to boot into dos. If not you have to find the jumper as Igor said. Or a new motherboard ;((

[jameswebster]

A down and dirty way to disable password protection:
Remove one of the memory modules. Once you boot the computer, this will force the PC to display an error message. From there, access the BIOS, Disable password protection, correct the memory configuration to reflect the removed memory module, save the BIOS changes, and then continue with the boot-up. Next, turn off the computer, replace the memory module, bootup and access the BIOS, restore the memory size field, save the BIOS changes, and continue with the bootup. This does allow you to change the password, since you do not know what the old one is, but it will allow you to use the computer.

[Que]

make a bootable floppy disk. then get one of the many bios password cracking programs found on the i-net. copy that program to the bootable disk you made. boot the pc in question using the disk you made. run the program. once you remove the bios password remove the disk and boot as normal.