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Thread: a question about PhoenixBIOS ..

  1. #1

    a question about PhoenixBIOS ..

    Hey, I hope this is isn the right forum .. it seemed the most fitting to me. Anyway, I friend of mine came over tonight and was wanting me to help him set some stuff up on his laptop. One of the things he wanted me to do was disable his BIOS password, I went in blanked it out, saved and rebooted. After that it wouldn't let me past the bios password (which should have been gone). I tryed everything, his old password, a single space, all spaces, so on and so on.

    So after none of that worked I turned to the internet, after a quick search on google I was able to find posts on various message boards from people that this has happened to with this particular ver. of the BIOS. They change/disable the password, reboot and then can't get back into it. The thing is, out of all those I was never able to find a fix. I searched around and found lists of backdoor passwords, I went through about 40 with no luck. And a search on here only gave me 1 result that didn't have a fix either .

    Can anyone give me any ideas? I've thought about trying to get in with a boot disk and resetting it with debug but I want to be sure that I don't damage the machine. I've found a few BIOS password recovery tools but I'm not sure how reliable they are and so on. Worst case scenario I guess would be tearing it open and pulling the battery for a few minutes. I've never taken apart a laptop though and don't know if it's something I'd want to try on someone elses machine.

    If any of you can give me any suggestions I would really appreciate it, I could post the code I would use in debug if any of you are familiar with it and could tell me exactly what it does. Here's his BIOS ver.

    PhoenixBIOS 4.0 Release 6.0

    and here's his laptop info ..

    HP OMNIBOOK XE3 BIOS Version GC.M1.61

    Any info would be appreciated.

    -gunder
    p.s. I am going to call HP in the morning but I kinda doubt they'd have a fix for me over the phone and I would like to fix it withought sending it back to them if possible.

  2. #2

    a question about PhoenixBIOS ..

    Hey, I hope this is isn the right forum .. it seemed the most fitting to me. Anyway, I friend of mine came over tonight and was wanting me to help him set some stuff up on his laptop. One of the things he wanted me to do was disable his BIOS password, I went in blanked it out, saved and rebooted. After that it wouldn't let me past the bios password (which should have been gone). I tryed everything, his old password, a single space, all spaces, so on and so on.

    So after none of that worked I turned to the internet, after a quick search on google I was able to find posts on various message boards from people that this has happened to with this particular ver. of the BIOS. They change/disable the password, reboot and then can't get back into it. The thing is, out of all those I was never able to find a fix. I searched around and found lists of backdoor passwords, I went through about 40 with no luck. And a search on here only gave me 1 result that didn't have a fix either .

    Can anyone give me any ideas? I've thought about trying to get in with a boot disk and resetting it with debug but I want to be sure that I don't damage the machine. I've found a few BIOS password recovery tools but I'm not sure how reliable they are and so on. Worst case scenario I guess would be tearing it open and pulling the battery for a few minutes. I've never taken apart a laptop though and don't know if it's something I'd want to try on someone elses machine.

    If any of you can give me any suggestions I would really appreciate it, I could post the code I would use in debug if any of you are familiar with it and could tell me exactly what it does. Here's his BIOS ver.

    PhoenixBIOS 4.0 Release 6.0

    and here's his laptop info ..

    HP OMNIBOOK XE3 BIOS Version GC.M1.61

    Any info would be appreciated.

    -gunder
    p.s. I am going to call HP in the morning but I kinda doubt they'd have a fix for me over the phone and I would like to fix it withought sending it back to them if possible.

  3. #3
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    Aug 2001
    Posts
    118

    There is a way

    Since it is a laptop this is gonna be a bitch. You can open it up and look for a clear CMOS jumper (yes they do exist on laptops) and pull it and wait about 30 seconds and put it back on and see if that clears up your problem. If all else fails you can *TRY* I say that with great skepticism to call the manufacturer and see if maybe you will get a cool tech support person on the line to help you out. Or you can try to find a BIOS chip for that *exact* and I do mean exact model laptop and replace it. Either way you do it all of the above are a pain in the ass but could solve your problem.
    Risk everything, or gain nothing.

  4. #4
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    Aug 2001
    Posts
    118

    There is a way

    Since it is a laptop this is gonna be a bitch. You can open it up and look for a clear CMOS jumper (yes they do exist on laptops) and pull it and wait about 30 seconds and put it back on and see if that clears up your problem. If all else fails you can *TRY* I say that with great skepticism to call the manufacturer and see if maybe you will get a cool tech support person on the line to help you out. Or you can try to find a BIOS chip for that *exact* and I do mean exact model laptop and replace it. Either way you do it all of the above are a pain in the ass but could solve your problem.
    Risk everything, or gain nothing.

  5. #5
    Ugh, that's what I was afraid of heh. The tech support guy said we'd have to have proof of ownership which is receipts and all that which are going to be hard to track down .. guess I'll be tearing it apart tonight. Thanks.

    -gunder

  6. #6
    Ugh, that's what I was afraid of heh. The tech support guy said we'd have to have proof of ownership which is receipts and all that which are going to be hard to track down .. guess I'll be tearing it apart tonight. Thanks.

    -gunder

  7. #7
    Member
    Join Date
    Oct 2002
    Posts
    65

    If it's not too late...!

    Whip out your digital camera (if you have one) and take pictures of it as you are disassembling it. They are priceless when you're putting it back together; even if you think you will remember where everything went then if it's still taken apart in a few days, you might not remember where 'that little clip' went. Good luck, and be careful! Laptops' guts are a little touchy sometimes...!
    Have you filled out an ID-10-T or PEBKAK form lately?

  8. #8
    Member
    Join Date
    Oct 2002
    Posts
    65

    If it's not too late...!

    Whip out your digital camera (if you have one) and take pictures of it as you are disassembling it. They are priceless when you're putting it back together; even if you think you will remember where everything went then if it's still taken apart in a few days, you might not remember where 'that little clip' went. Good luck, and be careful! Laptops' guts are a little touchy sometimes...!
    Have you filled out an ID-10-T or PEBKAK form lately?

  9. #9
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    Apr 2002
    Posts
    889
    Simple thing there are jumpers on the Mother, father and baby board take all of them off reboot put them back the same way and you can re-set the bios password. Now this would not be a laptop that was taken is it? Funny thing when something is taken and well you posted a want to know how to what make a computer taken by theft for own? Not what the site is about!
    I believe that one of the characteristics of the human race - possibly the one that is primarily responsible for its course of evolution - is that it has grown by creatively responding to failure.- Glen Seaborg

  10. #10
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    Apr 2002
    Posts
    889
    Simple thing there are jumpers on the Mother, father and baby board take all of them off reboot put them back the same way and you can re-set the bios password. Now this would not be a laptop that was taken is it? Funny thing when something is taken and well you posted a want to know how to what make a computer taken by theft for own? Not what the site is about!
    I believe that one of the characteristics of the human race - possibly the one that is primarily responsible for its course of evolution - is that it has grown by creatively responding to failure.- Glen Seaborg

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