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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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...!

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...!

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!

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!

Well, thanks for the responses guys my buddy was able to find his receipts and we got the backdoor password for the bios. It was "creative" incase anyone else runs into this problem. And to whoever it was giving me negative points read what I said more clearly, this is a KNOWN problem with this BIOS. If you don't beleive me send me a message and I'll be more than happy to show you links about other people have this problem. To everyone else thank you for your suggestions, I appreciate it.

-gunder

Well, thanks for the responses guys my buddy was able to find his receipts and we got the backdoor password for the bios. It was "creative" incase anyone else runs into this problem. And to whoever it was giving me negative points read what I said more clearly, this is a KNOWN problem with this BIOS. If you don't beleive me send me a message and I'll be more than happy to show you links about other people have this problem. To everyone else thank you for your suggestions, I appreciate it.

-gunder