I think that it's excellent that someone took the time to put together a newsletter.


In the newsletter, it was stated that BIOS passwords were programs meant to protect windows 95 and were usually executed from autoexec.bat.

In actuality true BIOS passwords are executed by the BIOS no the motherboard,
(hence the name) They are not resident anywhere on the hard drive, their values are stored in CMOS and the actualy bit of coding responsible for them is executed from the ROM or Flash Bios.

Some BIOS manufacturers put default passwords in their code so that passwords can be over-ridden, but it is seldom useful anymore, seeing as though there are hundreds of backup passwords.

The password can ususally be removed by removing the battery on the motherboard itself, although some motherboards require other steps to clear the CMOS. There is often a jumper for clearing cmos.

My favorite way to clear the CMOS if you have access to the computer once it is started is though direct port manipulation.
you have to set port 70 to value 2E then set port 71 to value FF
all values are in hexidecimal.

An easy way to do this is with debug, at the dos prompt type

debug
o 70 2E
o 71 FF
q



-8trak